| TEXEL WITH CHRISTMAS |
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End of December 2011 winter was very mild. Actually it wasn't winter at all; temperatures up to 10 degrees made it feel more like springtime. With Christmas we went to the island of Texel for a week. We stayed in a nice house a bit north of Den Hoorn.  Every day we went to stroll along the beaches of the Island. Specially in the south, not far away from where we stayed is the famous Mokbaai. We saw Hen Harriers each day and sometimes a Peregrine Falcon was on the hunt for sandpipers and other shorebirds. From the end of the Mokbaai there is a trail which leads to a very broad beach, called Hors.  One of the most significant shorebirds in winter at the North Sea Coast is the Sanderling.  I spent a couple of days on the beaches trying to picture these funny birds. I used a very low tripod, my lens is not even 10 cm above the sand. I got wet of course, because these birds tend to follow the tideline in their search of food. But, lying flat on my belly, acting as a seal, I could approach them quite close. Usually when I walked along the shore, the Sanderlings, Oystercatchers and Seagulls flew up and away. But I found out that they are less shy when there is a lot of food in the area. During the time that we were on the island we can't remember that we've ever seen so many Razor Shells and obviously they formed a major attraction for the birds to feed on. Next 2 pictures were taken when a flock of Sanderlings where feeding on a giant heap of these shells.   During our walks on the island we came across a young Grey Seal, lying 50 meters from the tide line, probably waiting for the next flood.  It lay there in the late afternoon, when the sun was already setting(Which started about 16. 30 hrs). To finish this item about our Christmasstay at Texel, I show one more picture of a group of Sanderlings in their usual behavior, following the tide line:  |