Two or maybe even three weeks ago the first Lapwings had reached Franconia, but until this afternoon I hadn´t even seen a single one. So it was very frustrating for me to see reports on Lapwings on ornitho.de every day over these past two weeks. Finally, yesterday news reached me that about 400 Lapwings were seen resting on a field near Augsfeld, a small village at the Großer Wörth, accompanied by a Golden Plover. So it isn´t difficult to guess what I did today.
Of course I couldn´t resist and paid the site a visit. Fortunately, it didn´t take very long to spot the hoped-for birds as they were very active and always on the heels of a tractor that was harrowing the field. Honestly, I could have stayed there all day to watch this spectacle, but since my time was limited I hastily scanned the large flock looking for the Golden Plover. So I found hundreds of Starlings, Skylarks, White Wagtails as well as a Peregrine, a Red Kite and four Common Buzzards, but no plover was to be seen. Repeating this process one or two times again with no success I turned over to take some pictures. While I was doing that, I got aware of a beige dot on the field, the Golden Plover. Although it doesn´t seem so well camouflaged on the paintings of your field guide, you can believe me that it´s very easy to overlook one of these.
After having enjoyed this spectacle for an complete hour I started to make back home. However, soon afterwards I detected some geese feeding on a meadow next to the street and so I stopped once more. The most were as expected Canada and Greylag Geese, but I was very astonished to see that also four Greater White-fronted Geese had joined them. With this surprise a very successful birding day finally ended. Please more of that.
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