It is a little-known fact that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote The Nutcracker Twitch before he moved on to the more widely known Nutcracker Suite. Humming extracts from that ballet I cycled through the early morning traffic towards De Tempel. Recent weeks had seen a benign invasion from Russia. Nutcrackers had appeared all over western Europe, and it was just a matter of time before they would pop up near me, or at least within cycling range. So I monitored the reports until the last week of October finally brought one close, at De Tempel. The entire week was sunny and clear but on the penultimate day of the month a thick fog had descended. This was my only available birding day, of course. Oh well.
Even with decent weather, I do not like twitching, chasing after a rarity, a vagrant. Usually, it means you show up, look where all the cameras are and tick off the bird. More often than not, these twitchable birds have been blown out of range. They are pitiful beasts, just waiting for a Sparrowhawk to put them out of their misery. This is how I have spotted Dusky Warbler for example. Worse, my first Olive-backed Pipit was on a supermarket parking lot. Not satisfying at all. The Nutcracker was going to be a twitch, but these birds “belong” in western Europe. Their invasions are a natural phenomenon and not an accident. I might even see natural behaviour. Enough reasons to try despite my misgivings.
At the gate I met two photographer/nature lovers. They did not mind me joining them as six eyes see more than two. Further down the wooded lanes we met another photographer and while the ladies moved ahead photographing the abundant mushrooms, we chatted a bit. “The Nutcracker! It’s here!”, an enthusiastic shout through the wood. Turned out the bird had been curiously observing the lady mycologists before they even had noticed the avian interest. We followed the bird to the foot of a tree where it disappeared into a hole in the ground.
The Nutcracker was extremely confiding, which is apparently characteristic of their behaviour. Our little group stood at two metres from the bird while it dug up one wasp after the other (my apologies for the blurry picture, but I really wanted to show the wasp).
We now became a beacon for others (twitchers) so the bird performed for an admiring audience.
After wolfing down a great many larvae the Nutcracker flew off. Other birders joined us so we could tell them “it was here minutes ago, but it’s gone now”. Considering the times I have been on the receiving end of such a remark, it felt strangely satisfactory to once be able to be the disappointer, not the disappointed. No place in heaven for me, I suppose. One last shot of the raided wasps’ nest and back on the bicycle.
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