On 13 Jan 25, news broke that a male Spectacled Eider had been found on the island of Texel, in Holland (pronounced Tessel). This is only the seventh Western Palearctic record of this mythical Seaduck. There are five previous accepted records being seen high in the Arctic: three records from Finnmark in North Norway and two Svalbard records. In early Nov 24, A male was also briefly seen near Reykjavik, Iceland, but it wasn't relocated. I wonder if this is the Texel individual.
I was immediately interested in a trip to see the Spectacled Eider, if it stuck around. However, there were two problems stopping me heading off. One was the pale phase Booted Eagle had been found the day before in Cornwall and due to prior commitments, I had been unable to head West to look for the Booted Eagle until 16 Jan. The second was I was due in Pompey on 20 Jan, as I was one of the Wildlife Guides in the first ORCA team on a Saga Cruise in the 2025 season. Before I headed off for the cruise, Pete Moore had asked if I was thinking of heading to Texel and we hatched the beginnings of a plan for a trip during the Feb half term.
I was keeping track of the news on the Spectacled Eider which I was on the cruise and was pleased to see it was being seen daily along the East side of Texel. When I returned, I discussed dates with Pete for his first European twitch. To be honest, I've only been on one mainland European twitch to see the gorgeous and confiding Hawk Owl that turned in Zwolle in Holland in Nov 13. But I've been on eleven twitches to Ireland over the years.
If you have a few days available, a mini-break trip to Holland provides plenty of Birding and sight-seeing options. We favoured heading over on the evening of Mon 17 Feb and taking the ferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. While this was a bit more expensive that travelling via Calais or Dunkirk, it would be only be a couple of hours journey to the Texel ferry and it would give us about seven hours of sleep. I was happy to drive as I'm insured to take my car to Europe for three months in a year. The car's built in European Sat Nav is a nice advantage. Our plan was to have a day and night on Texel, before heading off to Lelystad to the North East of Amsterdam for a Pygmy Cormorant, which would be a bonus Tick for Pete. I would then drop him to catch a train into Amsterdam to meet up with his wife, Claire and youngest son, Rowan. I had a rough plan for an extra day or two in Europe, but more of that in future Blog Posts.
I picked Pete up in his Wareham house about 15:30 and we were soon heading for Harwich. The check-in for the 23:00 ferry to the Hook of Holland closed forty-minutes before the ferry's departure. We thought we had an hour of time when we could find some food that evening and still arrive well in time for the ferry. We expected to hit the M25 around the rush hour, but being half term, we were banking on the traffic to be lighter than normal. As we got close to the M25, Pete said there was a two hour or so delay on the North bound route and my Sat Nav was showing heaving congestion on the South bound route. We weren't going to risk the long delays on my preferred route, so I would have to head for the Dartford Tunnel and add the toll into the cost of the trip. It was a slow crawl through Surrey and again at the Tunnel, but finally the traffic improved once we were North of the Thames. We arrived at the port about 21:30 and we were quickly through immigration. Surprisingly, we didn't have to wait for the next hour before could board the Stena ferry. By 22:15, we had had a look around the ship, found our cabin and bunked down for the night.
The alarm was set for 07:00 European time, to give us an hour for some breakfast and drinks in the cabin before our arrival. However, the ferry decided to wake us thirty minutes earlier, to advertise the restaurant was open. Still we had had a good night's sleep. We were quickly off the ferry and through the Dutch immigration with just one small worry. My car had the old GB numberplates. One of the million or so failures that Johnson's was responsible for, was the GB numberplates are no longer legal in Europe. We needed a UK sticker or new UK numberplates without the EU symbol on them. Due to a misunderstanding, the metallic sticker Pete brought along was also a GB one. I was worried I would get pulled over by the police at some point in the trip, but fortunately that didn't happen. I will have to get a new UK metallic sticker before I head off abroad again.
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The Texel ferry departs from Den Helder on the half hour, for the twenty minute crossing to Texel. It was clear that it was going to be very tight to connect with the 10:30 ferry, having encountered slow traffic as we left the Hook of Holland. I wasn't wanting to race to try to catch that ferry while I adjusted to driving a UK car on the wrong side of the road. But we could take it steady and easily arrive in time for the 11:30 ferry. The Texel ferry is very impressive as it is a community-owned, not for profit ferry to benefit the islanders. Such a contrast to the Studland ferry which is owned by a hotel chain that wants to massively increase ferry prices to prop up the struggling hotel chain. Pete had been pre-warned by James Lowen, that we should pre-book the ferry. The twenty-eight euro return ticket was valid for a mid-week departure on any ferry. They have numberplate to speed up the check-in process. Perhaps the Scottish government should get the TESO company to run the ferries to the outer islands, as these ferries would be a massive improvement on the current Calmac fleet.
We were quickly off the ferry and heading for the Spectacled Eider site. Since it was found, it has been feeding on the East side of the island about three or four miles North of the coastal town of Oudeschild, with a large, scattered flock of Eider. Over the several hours we were there, it drifted North as it was feeding, before finally drifting South again to the Iron Cape Monument (shown as IJzeren zeekaap on Googlemaps). It was easy to locate where we needed to park, as it was the only place on the road next to the seawall, where there was more than a couple of cars parked.
The photos are all very deceptive as it looks to be a nice sunny Winter's day. What they don't convey is there was a bitterly-cold twenty mile an hour wind coming straight into our faces and there was no shelter from the wind. By mid-afternoon, it was clear that the Spectacled Eider wasn't going to come any closer and I headed off to find a shop to get some food. But first, I nipped a quarter of a mile North. The coastal road is called Lancasterdijk (Lancaster Dyke), as it has a memorial to the one hundred and eighty-nine Allied aircrew who were killed on and around Texel during WW2. Many of the night-time bombers stationed in Lincolnshire and the Yorkshire coast, would have used the Dutch islands as a final landmark before heading out over the North Sea.
After returning to pick Pete up, we headed out in search of Geese. Not a hard target, given there are many thousands of them on Texel. I will cover the Geese in the next Blog Post.