Of course even though it wasn't that kind of holiday we kept our eyes open, seeing a Red Squirrel in Hannover City Centre, you never know one day in Birmingham or the Black Country!! We were staying just outside the City and had great sightings of White Stork from our Hotel, plus Buzzards, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Grey Heron and Cormorant by the nearby lakes. Plus the usual birds you would expect in an urbanish area.
In Cologne, we found a large flock of Ring-necked Parakeet, just off the Old Market Square, otherwise the usual city centre birds. We did however go for a trip on the Rhine, cruising down to Konigswinter (4 hours), from the boat we saw Cormorant, Oystercatcher, Mute Swan, Canada Geese, Black-headed Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Greylag and of course Mallard.
Our next stop in Heidelberg, provided Egyptian Geese in the Castle Grounds, along with Redstart and White Wagtail. We didn't have our bins with us on any of our sight-seeing trips, enough to carry! So the distant birds remain unidentified.
We did a lot of motorway driving and saw lots of Red Kites, a few Black Kites, Common Buzzard and Honey Buzzard a nice bonus!
After Heidelberg we made our first visit to the Black Forest, staying in a fantastic hotel near Lauterbach, this was the view from out hotel room balcony:
This did provide some birding opportunities and the bins came out! The best being at least 3 pairs of nesting Black Redstart around the hotel. I said this was the first visit, we stopped again on the way back from Munich for a couple of nights, to have a rest before the long drive back to the Hook of Holland! So this section covers both visits. So here are a few Redstart photos, all taken from our hotel room;
We also had a pair of Blackcap;
A highlight for Tina was a Black Woodpecker flying across the valley, sadly I had just popped out to get something from the car and missed it! But we also had Kites and Buzzard in the valley in front of us, no great photos though...
On our travels in the Black Forest we did see a few other birds and were lucky to get another Red Squirrel on a murky rainy day:
Another highlight, sorry no photo, were Nutcracker in the canopy around the Triberg Waterfall, a place well worth a visit, saw Red Squirrel there too.
The other birds included, Cirl Bunting, Goldfinch, Goldcrest, Coal Tit, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Mistle Thrush, Blackbird, Chaffinch, Chiffchaff, Swift, Swallow, Woodpigeon, Wren and House Martin.
I think the only birds we saw in Munich were Feral Pigeon, however a number of large Steins of Beer were seen!
In total we clocked up 44 species, not too bad!
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