Today, we were at the Chatzensee, a beautiful pond/reed area. Just two days ago I wrote about the spotted flycatcher’s ability to recognize a cuckoo’s egg, and today we get to see the perpetrator.
Cuckoos are usually rather hard to spot, even when one hears the calling male again and again.
Our house has been chosen as a nesting place by a pair of spotted flycatchers. The cute litte birds, easily overlooked, are flying back and forth, working on their net just underneath the rooftop. They like to build nests in little recesses, apparently our building fits the bill.
The spotted flycatcher is one of few species that displays excellent egg recognition, ie. cuckoos have a hard time with these ones.
After messing up that domestic duck a few days back, fate would have it we came upon the real thing yesterday. On a one-day escape from the bad weather in the north, we went to Lugano to stroll along the lake. There we saw this quite typical mallard hybrid, with the white breast often seen on hybrids (sorry about the focus, given the choice between focus and angle, I went for better angle).
Later on, at the mouth of the Cassarate, we find the culprit.
The hobby has a status of “near threatened” on the Swiss Red List, there are a few hundred breeding pairs left. The hobby spends November until March in southern Africa, thus migrates quite far.
The hobbies we’ve seen so far were always near the water, this one here hunting for insects over the Reuss.
What a beautiful, sunny holiday! We walked to Zug, along the lake we spotted the usual coots, great crested grebes and mallards. Also, one common pochard and four red-crested pochards, which came as a bit of a surprise, this late in the year.
What really stood out, however, was this mallard hybrid.
We weren’t sure about the mallard part, at first, but once the bird came out of the water, the typical blue patch on the wing was clearly visible.
The white would suggest a hybrid with a house-duck, but the bill seems off. We’re still a bit stumped.
A rainy, cold Sunday, not the most welcoming weather for birding. We like going to Flachsee, and there is a hide there, so we’ll be out of the rain. We’ve been to the hide before, and were rather disappointed. The location seemed unfortunate, we usually observed way more birds from the other side of the river. This time we were in for a treat, though.
The air is full of barn swallows swooping close over the water, with a few house martins among them. We see shovelers, garganey, a kingfisher within the first few minutes. There’s a reed warbler just outside the hide, singing loud and clear. Across the hide there’s a wader, appears to be a wood sandpiper. We later see another one on a sand bank a bit further downstream.
While a reed bunting sings just outside the hide, we look around and see an abundance of interesting birds. Lapwings (with two chicks), a night heron, little grebe, teal, one red-crested pochard, tufted ducks, a pair of goosanders, a ringed plover and one stork. It was a great day!
Birds and wildlife in Switzerland 