![]() The quarry cliffs where the Wallcreeper was seen frequently. I scanned the far-away cliffs of the quarry for roughly half an hour. The snow at this point clearly revealed that a birder with scope had been there that morning but had left before I got there. I therefore continued to the southern lookout point 15 minutes later, arriving there around 11:45 am. The pristine snow on the ground plainly showed that no other birder had been there that day, and a scanning of the cliffs lead to the discovery of the local pair of Eurasian Eagle Owls (the only pair in the Netherlands!), which are very nice birds, but are clearly not the Wallcreeper. The northern one was the first on my route. This was also the case here, but there were two lookout points from where the wallcreeper had been seen very reliably, one in the north and one in the south-east. The problem with active quarries is that they are dangerous places and therefore fenced off. Needless to say, it was just past 11:00 am when I parked my car at the quarry, shouldered my camera, binoculars and scope and was off to walk the snowy trails that lead around the active quarry. I was scheduled to leave Brussels around 10:00 am on the 30th of November to return to Germany, and the Maastricht quarry was practically right next to the highway and thus a reasonable detour on my way home (now you know what Brussels, Maastricht, and a Wallcreeper have in common). No, I am not exaggerating, I am merely conveying to you a basic understanding of the bird’s significance if it is just the second ever for the Netherlands.Įven more significant than its rarity in the Netherlands – from my perspective – was the following: This Wallcreeper was only the second ever to be seen in the Netherlands, a country that is amongst the very finest birding nations in the world where the most bizarre vagrants are seen practically on a daily basis. Maastricht is not Brussels, I know, but I’ll explain… Yet amazingly, a bird had been spotted just days before at a quarry next to Maastricht, the Netherlands. Brussels – as many will know – is significantly far off the area one would label as an even remotely possible winter area for Wallcreepers. I was to go on a business trip to Brussels, Belgium during the last two days of November. I got my second chance at a Wallcreeper sooner than expected. Part 1, in which I reveal to you the course of my 20-year search, is here, and part 2 about me finally finding my life Wallcreeper is here. He said that it was against his religion to fight someone in another country.This is the last part of my Wallcreeper trilogy in which I will tell the tale of another day, the day I set out to see the species’ colours. Ali said, and I quote: “No Viet Cong never called me a N*****.” He said that the real war was here in the United States. ![]() His resistance of the Vietnam War made a statement. It lived up to his later saying “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee … How can you hit something that you cannot see?!” The way he knocked Foreman out was so beautiful. If you watch the fight, you watch how he strategized by using the “rope-a-dope” and tiring out his opponent. For example, the fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, The Rumble in the Jungle, which aired on ABC’s Wide World of sports. The thing I liked about The Champ, is how he would get into his opponent’s head, and then knock ’em out. Well, that night, February 26, 1964, there was an upset. However, a young boxer coming into the game and coming with a mouth on him: “if you want to lose your money, go ahead and bet on Sonny.” I can remember growing up as a teenager, I was watching one of his clips against Sonny Listen. Muhammad Ali was one of the greatest of all time.
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