Moritzburg - Waterfowl, Yellow-legged Gull, Crested Tit and...Long-eared Owl?!

I experienced the BEST birding ever this past Sunday, just 8 km northwest of Dresden in Moritzburg. Just north of this not-so-spectacular town is the stunning baroque wilderness-retreat palace of the Prince electors of Saxony, whose halls are supposedly (I don't want to find out) with walls filled completely with hunting "trophies", even the dining room! (Can you imagine??) Well fortunately the fauna is protected today in the extensive forests bordering just to the north and west of the palace, called Friedewald, and the several lakes within the woods hold breeding as well as migrating waterfowl, some of which I have observed and reported below. I wish I brought a bike to cover more ground quicker, but in a 4 hour hike I managed to check out two lakes and about 4 miles of trails. I had to take a short bus ride from the Dresden-Neustadt station, but I waited an hour for it as I did not know the schedule in advance and it turns out they run only every hour or so on the weekends, and I had missed the previous one by about 5 minutes :(, so I didn't get there until late morning and it was (I suppose) relatively quiet and birds were definitely spread out (only saw or heard 1-3 species at any one location!) but it seemed that around ever bend in the trail a new species or two was waiting to be discovered! I managed to tally 45 species for the day in total which was higher than my goal of 40! I wonder, if I had a bike to cover more ground, and arrived an hour or two earlier, how many more species I would have found?? I didn't miss many common species though this time; most notable misses were Green Woodpecker, Hawfinch, Sparrowhawk, Common Buzzard and Red Kite, and Willow Tit, Wren, Bullfinch, Serin (had it the previous day, though). Including the species list from Saturday's morning walk at Grosser Garten (see previous blog entry), I managed to obtain a cummulative list of 51 species, 6 of which were lifers, whoohoo!

In order of appearance:

1) Barn Swallow - 4+
2) European Starling - x
3) Mallard - several pairs
4) COMMON GOLDENEYE - Nice surprise was 6 pairs, one pair even on the Lake around the palace.
5) Greylag Goose - x, one pair had goslings already!
6) Mute Swan - 5
7) GREAT CRESTED GREBE - several pairs on all the lakes; one pair made a courtship display even!
8) White Wagtail - x
9) Carrion Crow - x
10) Eurasian Coot - several pairs on all lakes.
11) Mandarin Duck - 1
12) Chaffinch - x
13) Great Tit - x
14) European Robin - x
15) Eurasian Nuthatch - 2-3
16) Great Spotted Woodpecker - 2
17) European Blackbird - x
18) RAVEN - 1-2 called at different locations.
19) Firecrest - 5+
20) Willow Warbler - several; finally got their song down!
21) Eurasian Blue Tit - x
22) Short-toed Creeper - 2
23) Chiffchaff - 2
24) CRESTED TIT - LIFER!
25) Blackcap - 6+
26) BLACK KITE - LIFER!
27) LONG-EARED OWL - not a lifer, but most amazing bird of the day no doubt. Was calling a long ways off by on of the lakes, where I heard one of the ravens calling also. Unfortunately the video recording I made with my camera just to record the calling was bad, and the "hoots" are almost not audible above th noise so I didn't post it here, so you'll just have to takemy word for it :)
28) Sand Martins - x
29) Song Thrush - 1 heard
30) Eurasian Jay - 1 heard
31) Common Swift - x
32) MARSH HARRIER - FOY, 1
33) Long-tailed Tit - x
34) POCHARD - LIFER! 1 drake
35) Wood Pigeon - x
36) Green Finch - many around the castle and surrounding gardens.
37) European Goldfinch - same as Green Finch.
38) YELLOW_LEGGED GULL - LIFER! Single bird soared over the Palace lake and circled it a few times.
39) Black Redstart - several, like Green Finch, but also in the town as well.
40) Hooded Crow - finally 2 showed up on the lawns of the palace!
41) Eurasian Tree Sparrow - 1 on the palace grounds
42) Rock Pigeon - 1 (like above)
43) House Sparrow - several in town gardens.
44) Kestrel - 1
45) Magpie - 1

I think I found a major candidate for a Saxon Big Day!
I can't help it; it's that time of year when I cannot stop thinking about WSB and big days :)
Good birding!