Scops Owl and Reed Warbler

After a day of much needed rain last weekend, the weather has turned rather showery and unseasonably cool. Nevertheless....
Scops owl are categorised as 'peu frequente' summer visitors to Charente which is the next group down from 'rare' on the Charente Nature site but they are pretty hard to come by. Their sonar-like call is very distinctive although it can easily be confused with that of a midwife toad so if you think you have located one make sure that is coming from an elevated position. (I once tracked down a likely suspect which was calling in the dark to echoes coming up from the village well.)
However, this time it was an owl rather than the unusual amphibian which I heard calling in the early evening from close to a friend's house in the upper Bonnieure valley and she told me that she regularly hears two of them there.
Reed warblers are not much more common here in my experience unless you can find any remaining reeds in our department; most have been replaced by poplar plantations. I have referred to a small patch on the Son-Sonnette in previous posts which usually hosts a pair or two in the summer and a male was rattling away there last week.