Saturday the 13th of November I (Lesley van Loo) picked up Sunny and Ankan for a morning of photographing birds at IJmuiden.
The weather forecast is not too good, it is supposed to be cloudy and should rain a lot. When we arrive at the parking lot we already think we can see the ocean but it is just the parking lot that is flooded. We manage to park the car so that we can get to the dunes without getting our feet wet.
At the dunes Ankan and I get our camera's out and Sunny, who is not a photographer, decides to take a walk on the beach. The weather is great, no rain at all.
As this is a photography trip we are not keeping a list of birds. After all, we want to take some nice pictures instead of seeing as many birds as possible.
When we are walking towards the sea we can already see some groups of sandpipers, most of them are Sanderling and they are very busy running and foraging. We decide to get a position in between two groups and wait so that they can come to us. We flip the backscreens of our camera so that we don't have to get down in the wet sand but still can get a nice low point of view. Soon the Sanderling start to come closer to us and we can get some nice shots of them foraging but also running and flying past us.
We have spent quite some time with those lovely busy birds before we decide to go to the pier. At the pier some gulls are flying by (always nice to get some flight shots) and Ruddy Turnstone and Purple Sandpiper are willing to cooperate, as always the Eurasian Rock Pipit isn't.
The tide is high and the waves are crashing hard against the pier, when we see some Turnstone near a puddle of water on the pier we try to get some shots of them with their reflection in the water, suddenly a wave comes splashing over the pier and we get our feet and legs wet, luckily not the camera's. We walk towards the end of the pier and have some distant views of a Grey Seal and some Common Mure. This time a Rock Pipit let us get a little bit closer.
When walking back we meet Sunny on the pier and we see the fishermen are catching a lot of fish, at the beach all the Sanderling have gathered in one large group. We walk to the car because I want to show them some Long-eared Owls on the way back to Amsterdam. When we arrive at the spot there are 3 hidden in a pine but in a Birch close by there are 5 and 2 of them are clearly visible, so we take some pictures with nice autumn colors before we head back to Amsterdam.
