It's good to be back in Charente but the weather is still rather unsettled and although it's reasonably hot and sunny at times it's not yet wall to wall blue skies for days on end.
Nevertheless, summer birds are here: a bright male golden oriole flitted briefly into view at La Poterie pond this afternoon and cuckoos are calling everywhere. The melodious warbler is still rattling away in the garden but no nightingale is singing there this year; in fact they seem to be rather quiet everywhere at the moment though one was competing vocally with a tawny owl at La Tache in the early hours.
A trip to the nearby forest allowed me to see two new species for the year: a spotted flycatcher was doing its usual thing to and from a dead branch and a honey buzzard circled overhead. There was no sight or sound of wood warbler though and this is a regular location for them at this time of year.
Besides the honey buzzard two other raptors were flying at great altitude, one was a black kite but the other was too high to identify. I was reminded of the time a year or two back when I saw several griffon vultures flying high above this very spot (but this wasn't the case this time)
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