On Monday 13 January 2025 at 13:01 hours Elian Hijne and Maurice Prince while birding on Texel found a male Spectacled Eider. They both uploaded this record with a picture of Maurice together with the immortal words 'Wtf' to the site for nature observations waarneming.nl. At 13:23 Lennart Verheuvel reported this in the Dutch Birding Alert system and at 13:31 hours in the two main app group of Dutch twitchers. This triggered an enormous stir in the twitching community and everybody who was in the opportunity drove to Texel as quickly as possible before darkness at c 17:15 would fall.
I saw the message as late as 13:31 hours and phoned Nick van der Ham, one of my fellow twitchers living near me in Alkmaar NH. He picked me up at 13:40 hours and together we drove to Texel. On our way we changed cars with Jan-Jaap Spaargaren from Schoorl NH and we arrived just in time in Den Helder to take the ferry to Texel at 14:30 hours (boats depart to Texel every hour on weekdays). After nerve-wrecking 20 minutes on the ferry we arrived at Texel at 14:52, and we had to drive another 20 minutes to Wagejot on the eastern site of Texel. The bird was still present at sea, diving, preening and eventually floating north and we could see it quite well, albeit from a distance. We followed the bird c 1.5 kilometers north, but at 16:03 hours the bird decided to fly southwards. Happily for the second boat load at 15:30 the bird decided to land c one kilometer south of the original spot, so everyone from the second boat and the third boat was able to see it till the last daylight at 17:30 hours.For me and Nick (and Ted Hoogendoorn, Enno Ebels and Dick Groenendijk) it was our 500th species in the Netherlands.
If accepted, it will be the first record for the Netherlands and the sixth record for Europe and the Western Palearctic.
In Europe the first record was in Norway on 12 December 1933 when a male was shot at Vardø, followed by records in 23-24 February 1988, again at Vardø, Norway (two males, one female), 15 June 1997, Mortensnes, Nesseby, Varanger Fjord, Norway (male), 30 April 2002, Jan Mayen Island, Svalbard, Norway (two males, one female) and 30 June 2012, few km west of Prins Karls Forland, Svalbard, Norway (male, female). Source: Tarsiger.
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