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.
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