Saturday, 2 April 2011
I'm still a bit busy sorting out things with the insurance people etc but I've managed to fit in some birding over the last few weeks and I'm pleased to see that others have too. I've not had much time to keep up the blog partly because I've only just been reconnected to the internet so here's an attempt at a summary of recent birding observations. The crane migration seems to have stuttered on till very recently with reports of skeins still moving north over Montignac up until last week. Black redstarts and blackcaps are singing everywhere, cuckoos are calling, swallows are flying around the villages, stone curlews are making their strange sounds at night and hoopoes are back in their traditional nesting places. Wheatears seem thin on the ground though, Irv had one sat on his wheelbarrow just over the border in Charente Maritime and I had a distant view of one yesterday even further east near Marenne but I've not had a sighting nearer home. There's no sign either of the rapidly declining little bustards which should have arrived by now. Chris and linda woke up to find a white stork resting in their garden near Fontenille and I saw four of them flying low over Mansle last week. A trip to the coast yesterday revealed that there are lots of them about including some which are already on their nests. It's a similar story with black kites; there were dozens of them close to the coast and quite a few have passed over locally. None of the river valleys are in flood after such a dry Spring and so it was no surprise to find nothing other than 2 migrating green sandpipers when I visited the Bandiat last week. There's still a lot of migration to take place, though, which is what makes this the most exciting time of the year. Yesterday's trip to the coast which I've already mentioned gave a little taster of the species which are just starting to arrive: a few whitethroats, were singing, some blue-headed wagtails were on the marshes, house martins were circling a church tower and a bonelli's warbler was doing its monotonous call in the coastal forest. I saw my first tree pipit of the year this morning. More details to follow.
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