GERMANY: BIRDS & ART IN BERLIN & BRANDENBURG SEPTEMBER 29–OCTOBER 8, 2019 A small part of the Great Bustard flock at Senzke. Photo Rick Wright LEADER: RICK WRIGHT LIST COMPILED BY: RICK WRIGHT VICTOR EMANUEL NATURE TOURS, INC. 2525 WALLINGWOOD DRIVE, SUITE 1003 AUSTIN, TEXAS 78746 WWW.VENTBIRD.COM GERMANY: BIRDS & ART IN BERLIN & BRANDENBURG September 29–October 8, 2019 By Rick Wright A few of the many hundreds of Northern Lapwings caught up in a cold-weather push at Linum. Photo Rick Wright ITINERARY: September 29: en route to Berlin. September 30: assemble 5:00 pm in hotel. Brandenburg Gate, Roma and Sinti Memorial. Dinner Reichstag 7:20-9:40 pm. Reichstag dome 9:40-10:05. At hotel 10:35 pm. Breezy, light rain, 50s F, after a day of very strong winds and occasional rain. Victor Emanuel Nature Tours 2 Germany: Birds & Art in Berlin & Brandenburg, 2019 October 1: breakfast in hotel beginning 6:30 am. Calm, 50 F, light rain. Optional Tiergarten walk 7:00-8:00. Departure 9:00 am . Tiergarten walk 9:00-11:55. Light rain, calm, mid-50s F. Lunch Giraffe 12:00-1:20 pm. Break in hotel. Departure for Nikolaiviertel 2:00 pm. Nikolaikirche 3:00- 3:30 pm. Drinks in Nikolaiviertel. Mid-50s, rain stopping, calm, occasional sun. Spree River, shopping, Nikolaiplatz. Dinner Altberliner Weissbierhaus 6:10-8:25 pm. At hotel 8:50 pm. The Brandenburg Gate, from the dome of the Reichstag. Photo Rick Wright High 40s F, clouds lifting, breeze rising. October 2: breakfast in hotel beginning 6:30 am. Light rain, breezy, high 40s F. Departure 8:05 am . Light rain followed by only very occasional sprinkles. Arrive Strengsee 9:25 am. Rain stopping, skies slowly clearing. Low 50s F. Leave Strengsee 11:45 am. Lunch Zille Stube 12:00 to 1:20 pm. Skies clearing, breeze decreasing. Kloster Lehnin, including cake and coffee, 1:30-4:20 pm. LIght sprinkles, then rainbows, dramatic clearing, and calm. At hotel 5:30 pm. Dinner and checklist in hotel 6:30-8:55 pm. Mostly clear, high 40s F, calm. Eurasian Wigeon. Photo Rick Wright October 3: breakfast in hotel beginning 6:30 am. Dim, chilly, light drizzle. Departure 8:35 am . Light sprinkles ending, breeze increasing. Charlottenburg palace garden 8:55-11:20 am. High 40s to low 50s F, breezy, occasional very light mist. Coffee in Orangerie 11:20- 12:25. Lunch Mangiare Opera Italiana 12:30-2:00 pm. Wind increasing, air drying, clouds dispersing, temperature falling back to high 40s F. Berggruen, Bröhan, and Scharf- Gerstenberg Museums 2:00 pm; some returned to hotel 4:40 pm, some remained in Victor Emanuel Nature Tours 3 Germany: Birds & Art in Berlin & Brandenburg, 2019 museums until dinner. Dinner and checklist at Marjan Grill 6:30-8:15 pm. At hotel 8:20 pm. Mostly clear, light breezes, ca. 50 F. October 4: breakfast in hotel beginning 6:30 am. Departure 8:00 am. Rain, light winds, 45 F. Senzke. Rain ending, temperature rising to about 50 F. G ülper See 10:35 to 12:55 pm. Occasional breaks in clouds. Lunch Zur alten Stadtmauer, Rathenow, 1:30-3:00 pm. At hotel 5:00 pm. Rain. Dinner in hotel 6:00-8:10 pm. Cloudy, light breezes, low 40s F. Kloster Lehnin. Photo Rick Wright October 5: breakfast in hotel beginning 6:30 am. Rain, wind, low 40s F. Departure 9:30 am. Light rain, high winds, 40 F. Kaiser- Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche 9:35-11:00 am. Coffee at Kulturforum 11:20-11:55 am. Rain diminishing, high winds, 40 F. Kulturforum museums to 2:00 pm. Lunch at Kulturforum 2:00-3:15 pm. Kulturforum museums; some return to hotel. Some to services, with Bach cantata (BWV 161, “Komm, Du süße Todesstunde”), in Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche 6:00-7:00 pm. All dinner at Josty 7:25-9:35 pm. Clearing, light breeze, high 30s F. At hotel 10:00 pm. October 6: breakfast in hotel beginning 6:30 am. Departure 8:05 am. Sunny, calm, 35 F. Altfriedland ponds 9:45 am to 12:55 pm. Sunny, calm, high 40s F. Lunch Klosterschänke 1:00-3:10 pm. At Goat, goatherd, and Gray Heron at hotel 4:40 pm. Dinner and checklist Brauhaus Lemke 6:30-8:30 Charlottenburg. Photo Rick Wright pm. At hotel 8:40 pm. Mostly cloudy, calm, mid-30s F. October 7: breakfast in hotel beginning 6:30 am. Departure 9:15 am. Bright sunshine, calm, mid-40s F. Museums of Museum Island from 9:45 am; some also to German “Cathedral,” some to German Historical Museum. Lunch on our own. Depart hotel 2:10 pm. Mostly sunny, calm, low 50s F. Linum ponds 3:25-5:25 pm. At hotel 6:35. Depart hotel 7:10 pm. Dinner Einstein Unter den Linden 7:40-9:35. At hotel 9:55 pm. Light overcast, low 50s F, calm. Victor Emanuel Nature Tours 4 Germany: Birds & Art in Berlin & Brandenburg, 2019 October 8: breakfast in hotel beginning 6:30 am. Tour ends. Neues Museum. Photo Rick Wright How annoying to wake up in the middle of a tour to find the temperature plunging, the wind howling, and a drizzle pelting down. How annoying? Not overly, if it’s a birds and art tour based in one of the greatest cities in the world. We’d planned to start our Berlin morning with another walk through the 500-acre Tiergarten, where our first stroll had produced Eurasian Nuthatches, Short-toed Treecreepers, Great Spotted Woodpeckers, and a remarkably obliging Common Buzzard— but the weather really was discouraging, even by birders’ standards. On a “normal” tour, those stormy skies would have put paid to our day, but we had the luxury of simply prolonging our lavish breakfast and hopping onto the train across the street for the 90-second ride to Berlin’s Zoo, whence it was a two-minute walk to one of the city’s most recognizable monuments. Originally built in the 1890s to honor modern Germany’s first emperor, the old Kaiser- Wilhelm- Gedächtnis-Kirche stands today as a Common Buzzard. Photo Rick Wright ruin, a warning to the future and simultaneously a marker of reconciliation, even forgiveness. The beautifully somber modern church at its base would be even more moving that evening, when some of us attended a service featuring a J.S. Bach cantata. A short ride took us from there to the Kulturforum, one of the The windows of the new Kaiser Wilhelm richest of Berlin’s many rich cultural sites. Stepping off the bus Church. Photo Rick Wright behind the gold-clad Philharmonic, we tried hard to choose Victor Emanuel Nature Tours 5 Germany: Birds & Art in Berlin & Brandenburg, 2019 among the options ahead of us: the treasures of art and design in the Kunstgewerbemuseum? Centuries of painting masterpieces in the Gemäldegalerie? The famous drawings, etchings, and engravings of the Kupferstichkabinett? Happily, a single ticket offers entry to all three museums, and we spent the rest of the day in and out of each of them, with breaks for lunch and coffee and a singing (but invisible) Black Redstart outside. There’s not much that is more fun than birding with artists or looking at art with birders. We all bring a different experience to whatever the things we see, and the combination of the ornithological gaze and the artist’s critical eye can result in some novel observations. Few, I think, are the visitors who can debate the identity of the duck that provided the inspiration for a particular set of Flemish angel’s wings, or who can recognize the Eurasian Jay patterns on their leading edge. We ended our day nearby, at the Potsdamer Platz, The Trinity (detail). Flemish, ca. 1420. once and now again one of the most bustling city Gemäldegalerie Berlin. Photo Rick Wright squares in all of Europe, surrounded by elegant stores and hotels and first-rate restaurants. We ate well that night, as we did every night and noon and morning, and were thoroughly prepared for a day outside the next, mercifully much nicer, day. That windy Saturday, the first time we’d ever had to rearrange this tour’s schedule, neatly proved our itinerary’s flexibility. The rest of our time together went just according to plan, though, with visits to museums, historic buildings, and sadly evocative memorials providing a counterpoint, a background, or often enough a foreground to some truly exciting birding. We birded the Gülper See almost literally beneath the shadow of an eighteenth-century windmill, Bean and Graylag geese and Common Cranes rising from the shallows as White-tailed Eagles passed overhead. At Altfriedland, we watched a Black Redstart hunting from the gable of a thirteenth-century Cistercian church while waterfowl and herons loafed on the ancient ponds. Hard as it may be to believe, our companionable group was probably the only table watching Common Chiffchaffs out the window as we waited for our lunch in the Cloister Tavern. Altfriedland. Photo Rick Wright The site of another Cistercian monastery, Kloster Lehnin, was equally evocative. After a morning of waterfowl and stunning Great Gray Shrikes at the Strengsee just a few minutes away, we had lunch in a delightfully old-fashioned restaurant in town, then strolled the peaceful walks of the monastery. Now in use as a hospital, staffed by Lutheran deaconesses, Victor Emanuel Nature Tours 6 Germany: Birds & Art in Berlin & Brandenburg, 2019 Lehnin preserves some of the loveliest red-brick Gothic buildings in the region, some dating to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.