Hel's angel?

Les at Hel train station

"See you in Hel" were the last words I uttered to Ingrid Tulp and Hans Schekkerman before jumping onto an aeroplane to jet to Europe on the 2 October 2002. It is not often that one gets to say that without being in a fit of anger but in this case we were looking forward to meeting again in Hel, Poland, for the Wader Study Group Meeting from the 4th to the 6th October.

Les Underhill and I left Cape Town in the trusty KLM jumbo on Tuesday afternoon and after successfully negotiating a change of planes in Amsterdam for Warsaw I had no idea what was further in store for us that day. We somehow managed a bus trip in Warsaw to the train station and wended our way to Gdynia. As our train arrived 4 minutes after our scheduled bus to Hel was supposed to leave we were wondering as we stood "stranded" at the bus stop how we were going to get to our desired destination... Only a few minutes later a mini-bus (a much more civilised version in comparison to the Cape Town variety) arrived and whisked us to the "Jantar" Military Holiday Unit at Jurata on the Hel Peninsula. As we staggered into the reception area we were greeted by the warm and friendly faces of Wloddk Meissner and Magda Remisiewicz. We could finally relax as we had arrived...

The forest intersected

Although we had arrived a day before the formal meeting was due to start Les attended the Executve Committee Meeting on the Thursday and I, well, I was left to my own devices. It turned out that there was a group of Dutch scientists, including Hans and Ingrid, that had also arrived a day in advance so we took advantage of the weather and did a little birding in the forests near our conference facilities. Even after numerous trips to Europe I walked home that day after having seen at least 5 new species including the Giant Woodpecker and Tree Creeper.

The beach at Hel

The Wader Study Group Meeting was fantastically organised! The presentations were fascinating and I learned a great deal. It was really great to obtain a different perspective on waders - looking at migration and the associated ecology of migrant species in relation to our resident species. In addition I subjected the conference members to my first presentation at an international conference and it was the first time that I was presenting data from my PhD research.

Gdynia train station

On Sunday afternoon we had a rather damp excursion to the tip of the peninsula where the town of Hel is situated. It certainly wasn't what I expected, no fire or brimstone. In fact it was rather chilly and if it wasn't for great Cape Storm jackets both Les and I would have returned as icicles. So, during the conference we were able to see a fair quantity of the peninsula, the story book forests and white beaches in addition to some great European birds!

After a productive Tringa workshop on Monday morning Les and I headed westwards and spent the night in Gdynia before the long journey home.