Tuesday 8 April 2014

Shoveler and Gadwall

Today was warm and mainly sunny but the fields around the rivers are still pretty sodden an so worth visiting in search of migrants attracted to water.
At Fougère today the list was quite interesting:

One male shoveler
Three gadwall
A dozen mallard
One white stork
Three great white egret
Seven mute swans .
Fifteen redshank
One greenshank
Eight green plover
One little ringed plover
Nine black headed gulls
One merlin
One black kite
(But no partridge in a pear tree!)

None of these birds would usually be present in these fields other than during migration. This applies to a much lesser extent to the fifteen or so grey herons that were dotted about.

Other notable observations from the last few days include a black woodpecker seen briefly near La Tâche and a pair of marsh tits near La Poterie.

Saturday's tally of birds within a ten kilometre radius of La Poterie fell just short of fifty species.

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