Pinail and Brenne

We took a trip up to the Pinail reserve north of Poitiers and then went east to have a look at The Brenne.

The weather is still unsettled but the afternoon was fine and warm. We went through a heavy thunder storm on the way back.

Pinail is an unusual area of heath bog which was formerly used for quarrying mill stones. It looks as though it should hold lots of dartford warblers but we didn't see any. There were at least three hobbies flying around catching the dragonflies. We also saw a pair of montagues harrier and two short-toed eagles, one of which soared very slowly over our heads giving the best views that I have had of this bird.

The Brenne had far more human visitors (there was nobody at Pinail) a good number of whom seemed to be English.

There were lots of whiskered terns and a few black ones, pochard , shoveler, tufted duck, gadwall, black necked grebe, little grebe, great crested grebe, great white egret, purple heron, cattle egret, great red warbler and black kite but virtually no waders on the lakes we looked at--just singles of wood sandpiper, common sandpiper and redshank plus a few lapwing.