Author Archives: Andrew Dressel

You may have noticed that I’ve been struggling a bit with little birds here. I think I’ve only shown you four so far, the chiffchaff, the sedge warbler, the reed bunting, and yesterday’s chaffinch. The first excuse that pops into my head is that they are less flashy than the ones back home. Think ofContinue reading “Delightful Dutch Weekend Overflow.”

It was another beautiful morning in South Holland, so I hopped on my bike and headed into the countryside again. My first new find is this striking common chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) finally posing perfectly after it made me chase it from perch to perch for a while. I read that chaffinch is “literally “chaff-finch,” so calledContinue reading “Another Dutch Day of Sunshine”

The planets aligned, and it was a nice sunny morning, for a change, and I had nothing else I had to do since the building in which I work is locked for the whole weekend, by policy, and I hear people need special permission to gain access. I could go to the library instead, butContinue reading “More Dutch Details…”

It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon in South Holland, and I’m in the library at TU Delft for the wifi and the comfortable working conditions. Despite the gloomy weather, I saw some fun scenes on my bike ride up from Rotterdam. I was just riding a long and saw a big white bird land in theContinue reading “Another new bird and some new sights.”

It’s a rainy Saturday morning in Rotterdam, and I’m taking a break from bicycle riding to recover a bit from the recent big uptick in my daily mileage, so no new pictures today. Instead, here are some new sights from my ride back to Rotterdam from Delft yesterday evening. First, I came across this pheasantContinue reading “Time to get caught up…”

I’m starting to get quite a backlog of little birds that I still need to identify, but in the meantime, it was a beautiful morning to ride across the Dutch countryside, and I caught some interesting scenes of birds we’ve already seen. First, I finally found a mute swan with cygnets, and these ones sureContinue reading “Dutch countryside action scenes!”

I’ve had to work this week, if you can believe it, and so I haven’t gotten to go looking for wildlife. On the commute, however, from Rotterdam, where my boss and his wife are graciously putting me up until I can find my own place, to Delft, where we work, I was seeing some amazingContinue reading “Scenes from the Dutch countryside.”

It rained on and off all morning, so I didn’t get out until the afternoon, and then I just went to the canal behind my friends’ apartment, called “boerengat” on google maps, instead of going to the plas. The first new bird for today is a common wood-pigeon (Columba palumbus), which looks a lot likeContinue reading “A rainy day in South Holland”

The jet lag has been mercifully mild so far this trip, and I even managed to stay up late with my gracious hosts last evening, so I didn’t make it to Kralingse Plas this morning until about 11. Happily, the birds appear to have waited up for me, because they were even more plentiful than yesterday.Continue reading “Dutch Detour Day 2”

I made it to Holland in one piece, and after I arrived at my bosses place, I was able to reassemble my bicycle back into one piece, too. We even went out for a test ride yesterday afternoon, and there were so many birds on the water, that I could hardly wait to get outContinue reading ““The Bicycle of the Future” – Day 1″