It may not have been noticed by everyone, but this period is the ideal time for bird watching. During the National Bird Week from 6 to 15 May most birds can be seen in the Netherlands. All songbirds, swamp and meadow birds are then back from their wintering areas to give birth to their offspring here. And birds, says birdwatcher and maker of the acclaimed bird spot Arjan Dwarshuis (35), ‘are the most numerous and most visible part of Dutch nature’. But how do you go about looking at those birds and preferably keeping them apart?
The best birding area is your backyard/balcony. The Netherlands has bird oases, such as the Wadden and Oostvaardersplassen, which are unparalleled in Europe. Still, it’s better to start close to home. Even from the Amsterdam balcony of Dwarshuis, more than a hundred species can be seen. From home you can observe birds in peace and determine whether it is a female, male or young (‘juvenile’) sparrow, tit or blackbird. Of course it helps if you make your garden or balcony greener. ‘Look at your garden through the eyes of a bird’, advises the Netherlands’ most famous birdwatcher Nico de Haan. ‘Combine different elements: a lawn, borders with plants, shrubs and, if possible, a tree. For example, I once planted a rosehip, which greenfinch (a type of finch, red.) attracts.’ A simple tip: treat birds to a bowl of fresh water, success is assured.
Rediscover the child in you. ‘You can let go of any child in the garden and then it will automatically become fascinated by the creatures you find there,’ says Dwarshuis. ‘That fades into the background with people as they get older. Then nature becomes something for BBC documentaries about deep jungles and remote deserts.’ Birding is above all a matter of taking your time, which is not always easy for adults. Staying in a forest or park for fifteen minutes, without doing anything, and the birds will appear on their own.
Buy a viewer. With binoculars you isolate birds from their environment and you can zoom in on details that make it easier to recognize a species. A magnification factor of 8 or 10 is sufficient. You can get a good pair of binoculars for a few hundred euros, on Marktplaats it starts from 100 euros. A telescope on a tripod (magnification up to 60 times) is very nice to bring the birds on the mudflats closer, for example, but a good one is quite pricey.
Get a bird guide. Modern guides are often accompanied by QR codes that allow you to play sounds on your phone. That is a huge gain, because many birds are best recognized by their song. This applies in particular to what bird watchers call ‘kbv’ – a small brown bird – if they don’t know it for a while. A classic bird guide is that of the ANWB, but it is so complete that it can also cause confusion. Nico de Haan: ‘On an excursion to the Oostvaardersplassen, a participant thought he saw an extremely rare American sandpiper – even though it was a black-tailed godwit. That’s because such a guide presents a lot of birds that you will never see in the Netherlands.’ During corona, De Haan decided to put together his own, clearer bird guide for novice birders: The clever bird guidewhich ranks based on color, shape, and habitat.
Make it a sport. ‘Birds are a species Pokemon GO for adults’, says Arjan Dwarshuis. ‘Or go on a safari in your own country.’ Getting close to his 2016 bird counting world record – 6,852 species in 40 countries in 366 days – is impossible, but it’s fun to keep track of how many birds you’ve spotted. Dwarshuis has renounced real types of hunting (‘twitching’) – jumping into your car when a rare species is reported somewhere. ‘But I still have a club of guys my age with whom we hold a self-discovery competition and can win a real challenge cup. It has a geek level of 10, but for me that competitive element makes it exciting.’
Any season is good. Spring and autumn (with the bird migration) are favorites. But the winter, with special water birds, and the summer, with young stuff that fly out, are also worth it, says Dwarshuis – also author of Summer guests, migrants and winter visitors, about what you can see in which season.
The bird population on farmland has declined due to intensification of agriculture, say Nico de Haan and Arjan Dwarshuis in unison. But the necessary new, often wet nature has also been created, which birds respond to surprisingly quickly. ‘We still live here in a bird mecca.’