white-headed long-tailed tit — Birding

With ‘enjoy it while it lasts’ in mind, I visited the Rietputten again. In the upcoming weeks, months or years — I don’t even know exactly — this area will be used for the construction of a tunnel. Unfortunately this means that — again — a beautiful Dutch ‘polder’, home to equally beautiful Bearded tits, will be sacrificed to a chunk of asphalt that will ‘automagically’ make all traffic jams vanish.

At least it was a special day, because it started off with a 1hr+ private session with a group of Bearded tits. Usually you quickly end up having to share that experience with multiple photographers, but this time it was just me and the birds. Even though they remained quite far away, it was a joy to experience.

A couple hundred photos later I decided to continue exploring the rest of the area. There was supposed to be a European serin, but I did not find it. Instead, what I discovered was at least equally nice: a rare White-headed Long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus caudatus). The following picture was the only acceptable one in the short sequence I shot, but discovering this bird totally made my day. :-)

White-headed Long-tailed tit / Aegithalos caudatus caudatus — White-headed Long-tailed tit / *Aegithalos caudatus caudatus*

And some pictures of the Bearded tits:

Enjoying it while it lasts…