Woodpecker city in France.

We were seeing spots before our eyes. Lesser, Middle and Greater.

A little greatness

It’s strange. There were no little Egrets at the Lac du Der in France the other week; plenty of Great White Egrets but no Little’s. They are migratory and only come back to the region in summer to breed. How odd that they can be found here in the UK all year round.

Creeping around trees

I love the song of the Short toed Treecreeper, so different from our own Eurasian Treecreeper; still high pitched, but more fluty. Not difficult to find in France last week, we saw plenty. Readily distinguishable when not singing even at a distance by the white tips to the flight feathers forming a horseshoe on the back of the bird. A closer look also reveals the stepped markings on the wing are nice and even unlike the Eurasian which are very uneven.

Migration of the Cranes

Looking for Woodpeckers in deep forest we’d been aware of the sound of Cranes for most of the time. However, it wasn’t until we were nearing the end of the day that we were in a position to take a look at them. We found a small party in a winter wheat field. Parking the car at the roadside we got out to take a closer look … I couldn’t believe what we saw.

Last week we were among the gentle rolling hills of the Champagne region in France. We were there to watch the spring Crane migration and to see a few woodpeckers. The sun was out and the wind blowing gently. We had already seen cranes in some number, eleven hundred crowded into one field no less and I thought perhaps we had arrived in France a little late for further numbers.

As we stood on the roadside that evening a few cranes were flying over; I looked out southward towards the horizon to see ribbon after ribbon of birds migrating north towards us. Each flock was followed by another and then another. Tens became hundreds and hundreds became thousands. We estimated in the one hour before dark we had fifteen thousand fly over us that fine evening. As we left still more were coming.