Bad timing...

Very bad timing, indeed.

I will be going back to the German Baltic Sea coast, namely the area around the cities of Stralsund and Greifswald, in about 3 weeks.

It's a good time to return there with the onset of the fall migration of geese and cranes. August however, which is now, is a truly miraculous month there - just like about everywhere else in the northern hemisphere - for watching the migration of shorebirds (or waders, if you prefer, a subject on which I am rather indifferent, although the German expression translates to "waders" as well).

Anyway, today I received an email through our local Baltic Coast birders forum about a Grey-tailed Tattler that was observed in my Baltic home patch north of Greifswald, the salt marshes of Karrendorf.

Well, not only would this have been a lifer for me.
It is also a first for Germany, and that doesn't happen all that often anymore.
And it is a species so rare even in a European context that I got an email from a friend from the UK inquiring about it as it was on their pagers as well.


Aaaand ... it is grey and cold outside, raining rats and hogs and I am stuck in front of my computer covered up to my neck in work.


You just have to agree: something here didn't work out the way it should have, something along the string of time went awfully wrong!