Tree Sparrows and Black Terns

Later this week we are off to Ireland for a wedding (and perhaps a much needed holiday as we have been inundated with visitors this summer.) I've been making the most of the remaining days of August to check out signs of the return migration and it's been quite rewarding.
 A few whinchats were moving through this week and I've seen several pied flycatchers in my garden and elsewhere. Also in the garden have been two bright willow warblers and several common and black redstarts.
I went further afield to the lakes of the high Charente today in an attempt to catch up on those migrants that need a stretch of water, a habitat that's in short supply closer to home, and watched eight marsh terns dipping in the lake at Chaban. Several of them were certainly black terns but others might have been whiskered; I hadn't taken my telescope with me and they never came closer than a hundred yards or so. I came across no waders other than common sandpiper but a good selection has been reported by Charente Nature mainly on the other lake at Lavaud. There were plenty of herons, a few cormorants and singles of little and great white egrets and great crested grebe.
The most interesting birds for me this week,though,were not migrants but some rather rare residents, tree sparrows. I came across at least three of them mixed in with several house sparrows and a few serins near La Rochette. These attractive birds are localised and possibly overlooked and the first I've seen in Charente for several years. Shortly before I saw them I had good views of a lesser spotted woodpecker, the second one for me this month.

Late Evening Birds

Dawn is always the best time for birding but despite its attractions it seems increasingly more difficult to get up with the larks. An extreme alternative on very hot days like today is to wait until an hour or so before sunset and then observe what the birds are doing.
In truth there was not a great deal of activity this evening as most birds had perhaps gone to roost but a cycle over the plains was rewarded by finding a group of five hoopoes feeding in a meadow. More precisely, four of them were while the fifth stayed apart and motionless on the ground. Perhaps he had already settled down for the night.
While watching them I heard the forlorn cry of a stone curlew and a scan of a nearby field revealed two individuals sitting quite still but in their case these crepuscular birds were doubtlessly waiting for near darkness before they began their feeding.
In fading light I passed by the bio farm and came across another motionless bird, this time a pied flycatcher perched on a dead branch. The insects he feeds on had probably settled down for the night and maybe he was already drifting into sleep.

White Storks

There were 101 of them and they were black and white but they were storks rather than dogs and they  
were standing in a field in Valence. They were first seen there on Tuesday evening and some were even sitting on roofs and telephone poles. By wednesday morning they had moved to another field closer to the church but when I last went to look late that afternoon they had moved on, presumably towards Spain. While I was photographing them I heard a stone curlew call several times but I was not able to locate him.
The storks show us that migration is under way. The swifts have already left of course and probably quite a few of the swallows as well although many of them are still to be seen gathering in flocks while house martins are now only occasionally glimpsed.
I'm still waiting for the first pied flycatchers of the return migration but there are plenty of the spotted variety to be found at the moment. An unexpected early individual was a female wheatear which I came across near Artenac last Saturday.
Other recent birds of note include an obliging sleek Cetti's warbler which allowed me to watch him by the footbridge at Le Moulin d'Oiseau for some minutes, kingfishers on both the Charente and the Son-Sonnette and several hoopoes but it's now difficult to find any red backed shrikes in their usual haunts.

Hobby

It's taken a long time this summer to see my first hobby so I watched the one that was hunting swallows near the bio farm for some time. It was the swallows' alarm calls which alerted me to his presence and it was fascinating to see how the intended victims quickly became the aggressor by ganging up to see him off. A few moments later I witnessed swallows adopting a simlar tactic by flying close to a family of red backed shrikes to disturb them from their hunting perches.
Thursday gave the garden some very welcome rain after the hot spell and today (Saturday) the birds seem much more active. As I write this in the early morning sunshine several families are busy flitting from shrub to tree and occasionally sitting on the lawn. The largest group is of blackcaps but there are also blue and great tits, robins, melodious warblers, greenfinches, goldfinches, chaffinches, blackbirds, sparrows, starlings and firecrest. The young moorhens are also chugging about on the pond.
Away from the garden, the Orioles seem to have finally stopped singing but I did hear a stone curlew calling on the plains last week. A pair of kingfishers brightened up the river near Lichère and there are plenty of red backed shrikes and stonechats about but many habitats appear to be rather quiet which is typical of much of August.