September and a mountain trip

So far it's been a quiet September birdwise. The warm and settled conditions have just broken and stormy, rainy weather is the order of the day at the moment.The rain is desperately needed as the village pond is almost dry and our only surviving mallard looks rather forlorn as he perches on the side of the old bath which I placed there to retain a little water. The moorhens seem to have largely disappeared.
The sunflowers have largely been harvested now and there is plenty of spilled seed around but a few sparrows, linnets, tits and chaffinches seem to be the only beneficiaries at present.
Swallows have been around in abundance over the last week or so but the change to wetter and cooler weather will doubtlessly thin out their numbers.
There is little warbler activity except for the occasional tacking of blackcaps but a robin has been trying out his autumn song in the garden.
Earlier in the month I had a short break with Irv in the Massif Central (a remarkably beautiful area and not much further than a three hour drive) where we managed to reach the summits of a couple of 6000 footers. On the higher slopes migrating wheatears and black redstarts were plentiful as were red kites, whinchats and pied flycatchers lower down. In the town of Murat where we stayed, a pair of eagle owls were calling in the evening.

back on line

It's been a long wait but the move back to La Poterie did not coincide with a connection to the telephone or internet . Today it has been resolved and I hope to do some reporting of the birding scene in between doing the 1001 things that are are outstanding on the new house. That includes a trip to Saintes tomorrow to buy a new sink. Perhaps I'll see some migrants on the way. A couple of wheatears were between here and La Tache today so some stuff is still moving through.