Waterfowl Winter Gathering — Lake Constance Bodensee Baden-Württemberg

Each November through February, Lake Constance — the Bodensee, straddling the borders of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland — hosts Central Europe's most important inland waterfowl wintering concentration as tufted ducks, pochards, goldeneye, and goosanders gather in flocks of up to 300,000 birds on the lake's open water, their rafts visible from the German shore between Konstanz and Friedrichshafen as dark masses that periodically erupt in mass take-offs of extraordinary visual scale. The Bodensee's combination of mild temperature moderated by the lake's thermal mass, abundant submerged vegetation, and the absence of ice in all but the coldest winters creates one of the most reliable wintering waterfowl sites in the Alpine region, and the lake's accessibility from Stuttgart, Zurich, and Munich makes it Central Europe's most visited inland birding destination in winter. The western Untersee section near Radolfzell and the Wollmatinger Ried reed bed provide the finest close-range waterfowl viewing, and the NABU reserve at Mettnau Peninsula offers hides overlooking the most concentrated diving duck flocks. The surrounding Bodensee landscape — the Hegau volcanic plugs, the Alpine foothills of Vorarlberg above the Austrian shore, and the medieval town of Konstanz at the lake's western outlet — creates a distinctly Central European winter lake landscape of considerable beauty. Rare winter visitors including red-throated diver, smew, and black-throated diver appear annually in the diving duck flocks.