Late December

The weather has remained mild with some rain but temperatures are forecast for a sharp drop tomorrow and that may bring some changes on the bird front. At present, though, there is little of note to report other than the usual large flocks of skylarks in the fields and what seems to be a seasonal invasion of jackdaws and rooks to farmland which is usually monopolised by crows.
I did hear a lesser spotted woodpecker close to the house on Boxing Day but failed to locate it, a very different situation to the one that I recently reported. That individual was just above my head in a small tree at the side of the Sources de Trouve.
Other location details that I omitted from that last post were that the black woodpecker was flying over and calling in the Braconne forest and that the siskins (my first of the year) were feeding at the top of silver birches in a garden at Saint Angeau. The goldcrest was in another garden nearby. The flock of fieldfares (my first of the year in Charente) were by the Bandiat as were the reed warblers, and the kingfisher and water pipit were on the Trouve at Magnac along with more than a hundred little grebes.
Incidentally, the Tardoire and Bandiat rivers are now flowing above ground after recent rains. Sadly, the Bonnieure is being stripped of many of the trees along its banks near to Saint Mary.