Golden Orioles

• The rich fluting call of a golden oriole is a familiar one throughout Charente summers and I heard my first of the year as I stepped outside this morning and then several more in other locations during the day. Some starlings have kept the song in mind with their mimicry earlier in the Spring but theirs is a pale version of the real thing.
• Temperatures reached the upper 20's today so I took two trips out, one on the bike and another in the car.  The latter was to the stretch of the Charente valley at Luxé below where the new LGV bridge crosses. Immediately below the bridge and possibly as a result of the construction of its supports is a stretch of shallow water where the river spreads out around the concrete columns. It probably disappears in the summer when the river level drops but although it has shrunk in size since the last time I visited, it still extends to an acre or two. The reason that I mention it is because it may be an interesting place to see passage water birds on migration.
• Today there were at least seven common sandpipers and one green sandpiper feeding around its edges. I was also honoured with the sight of a bright kingfisher hovering before diving to catch a fish. Whitethroats were very plentiful as I walked down the track which leads to this stretch of water.

Bonelli's Warbler

Bonnelli's warblers are Summer visitors and widespread in our forests but easily overlooked. They fall into the category of LBJ's or little brown jobs but this does them some mis-service as they are more distinctly plumaged than say chiffchaffs, perhaps the ultimate LBJ.
They are most easily located by their call, a short trill of a couple of seconds which is frequently repeated and quite far carrying.
I failed to find any in my trip to the Braconne earlier in the week but one was calling and showing himself well in the Forêt de Belaire  on Saturday and I expect that more will be arriving in the next few weeks.

Another LBJ, the corn bunting, is particularly vociferous in our fields at the moment.
House martins have been flying around he bridge over the Bonnieure at Saint Amant this week.

A Day in the Brenne

The weather forecast promised sunshine further north today so I drove up to The Brenne which I'd about two hours north of here. Sure enough, the sun shone all day and there was some good birding.
It's not an easy area to work as it's so extensive and the best lakes to view are rather scattered and poorly signposted but I managed to see many of its specialities although mainly in small numbers.
I've not come across a grasshopper warbler for a long time and wasn't really expecting one today but one was reeling away at my first roadside stop. He was very skulking as always and I didn't stay around long enough to get other than flitting views.
Purple herons were more common than greys and I had good views of a night heron sitting in a dead tree by a lakeside. Several cattle egret were around and a single great white.
Wildfowl were not plentiful except for coots but there was an interesting range including red crested pochard and common pochard. Black necked grebes are a Brenne speciality but I found them on only one lake. Great crested were everywhere though.
Garganey were mentioned on the recent sightings board but none showed up for me.
The water levels were too high to expect many waders but I did manage to see common sandpiper, little ringed plover, lapwing, snipe and greenshank.
Another breeding speciality is whiskered tern of which I saw just a single bird. Perhaps the other two hundred which make up the usual summer total had not yet arrived.
House martins were busily building their nests at the restaurant where I had lunch and several swifts were flying around too.
Other birds of note were my first singing reed warblers of the year, although I never actually saw them, and several black kites.

Owl with long ears and Eagle with short toes

Today was the third consecutive one when temperatures hit 30C although it's forecast to change from tomorrow. Spring continues to turn up its delights one of which was a short toed eagle at the Braconne yesterday. I watched it floating above me until it was seen off by a buzzard,

Long eared owls are not migrants but Spring could be the best place to locate them when they have young as they are early breeders. The appearance of a very fluffy fledgling accompanied by one of its parents was an unexpected occurrence near the eoliens and entirely the result of noisy disturbance by a troupe of over twenty quad bikes passing over the plains on Sunday morning. I saw the adult again yesterday in the same small stand of trees. This is the first time I've come across this elusive species since I found two roosting in my garden a few years back.

Speaking of the garden, a nightingale began to sing there this evening and a male hen harrier has passed very close to the boundary today and yesterday. The serins are still buzzing about and cuckoos call constantly.

Just after seeing the owls on Sunday I watched two stone curlews in an adjacent field and then three more about a kilometre away. I always scan the fields for the sight of a little bustard but it seem more and more to be a futile exercise nowadays. I'm tempted to investigate the large grain fields further north to discover if some are still hanging on there.

Nightingales

Yesterday saw a mainly cloudy interlude in the recent clear and very warm weather. I took to my bike nevertheless and was rewarded with several new migrants among the forty five species that came my way. The most notable were nightingales which were singing in over half a dozen locations, although not yet in a full throated way.
While watching my first tree pipit of the year which was typically singing from the very top of a tree, an early swift flew high up across my line of sight.
Other migrants, although not new ones, included hoopoe, cuckoo, yellow wagtail, green sandpiper, swallow ( including one group of fifteen which sat evenly spaced on a telephone line) and meadow pipit.

Redstart

Light rain is falling at the moment but the last few days have been delightfully sunny and warm despite a strong breeze at times. Work in the garden has restricted my birding but it's had the effect of focusing my attention on what's turning up around the house.
Yesterday a bright male common redstart graced the garden, joining with the pair of black redstarts which have been here for a couple of weeks now. It seems to be a good Spring for blackcaps and several of them been in the garden along with a few chiffchaffs. A pair of serins have taken up occupancy and sing noisily from the treetops when not chasing each other around. Speaking of treetops, a hoopoe was sitting in one of mine on Wednesday . Several cuckoos are calling from the nearby woods and I've seen them fly over the garden from time to time.
I've admitted before that I'm a compulsive bird lister and I can report that noting twenty something species around the garden is quite easy at this time of year and a local bike ride pushes this up to around forty. A black kite and few more wheatears were the highlights of a recent trip around the eoliens.
My last trip to the Bandiat turned up a few green sandpipers, one little ringed plover and a single yellow wagtail.

Stone Curlew and Hoopoe

The dull cool weather continues but I still took a ride around the plains this morning. I managed to relocate the stone curlew, in fact a pair of them, in a different ploughed field. As usual, both were crouched motionless close to the ground.

Hoopoes have been calling for a few days now but the the first one that I've seen this year was at Artenac.

Just one male wheatear was showing on the plains and a male hen harrier was cruising over the rape fields, probably the same individual which I saw from the house yesterday.

The rape fields are a popular location for corn buntings and several were singing away this morning.

There must have been a major arrival of blackcaps in the night as their numbers were in the dozens including one party of at least twenty which was involed in a squabble in a short stretch of hedge.

Charente Wheatears

I caught a glimpse of a wheatear in Charente Maritime a couple of weeks back but I had to wait until today to see any on my own doorstep - two males in fact, feeding busily on a ploughed field near the eoliens. More so than swallows, cuckoos or even snowdrops, the arrival of wheatears always creates for me the illusion that things are still alright with the world and that the cycle continues.
The most plentiful migrant today, though, was the swallow with dozens about in several locations including the Bandiat where they were accompanied by a single sand martin, six green sandpipers and three redshanks.
Closely following the swallow in terms of numbers was the meadow pipit; with dozens on the Lairiere plains alone. There are also far more blackcaps around than on previous days and chiffchaffs are plentiful.
The first bird that I heard this morning was a cuckoo and I heard another at the Bandiat which has slightly expanded it's flooded area after the recent rain.
A scan of all the bare earth fields on the plains failed to reveal last week's stone curlew.
A minor 'first' today was the sight of a buzzard landing briefly on my lawn!