New Hobbies

Yesterday at about 9pm I was called to the window by a shout of "the kestrel's back!" All winter a female kestrel used our hangar as a base, slept (and all that that involved there overnight, but never so much as looked at the kestrel box and vanished in March, at the same time as the male from the Lavoir disappeared.

I looked toward the poplar plantation, where a pair of streamlined bodies were swooping around. Another shout: "No, they're hobbies!"

Hand held camera at dusk, please note

 Dusk was gathering, so we couldn't see clearly the red "trousers" that the hobby is famous for. What we had to go on was the flight behaviour (sweeping rapidly over an area, no hovering, grabbing insects out of the air with its feet), the shape (long, narrow, pointed wings) and the contrast (between the white neck and the dark moustache, and between the dark back and the pale underside of the body and wing. Tim took over 60 photographs in about a 20 minutes, as they caught and consumed a good number of flying insects. Their flight path took the around the poplar plantation, across the Aigronne at the barrage and along the riverbank to Le Pressoir and the road below Grandmont.

The red trousers are visible in pictures lightened using Photoshop

The hobby falco subbuteo faucon hobereau is another migratory species, taking its chances against the hunters' guns. This little corner is ideal for them: they like riverbanks with woodlands, and the only disturbance is from fishermen who can be bothered to walk that far. I've been seeing "kestrels" over there for a couple of weeks, except that they looked wrong. Interestingly, the crows steered clear of them, whereas they would dive-bomb a buzzard and generally harrass it until they had driven it away. The hobby is a little smaller than a kestrel, though you'd have to see them side by side to say which was which. One was bigger than the other - in many raptor species, the female is considerably larger than the male, so we have a pair.

Light underparts...

May they stay and raise a family - they were a splendid sight!

I can do long, narrow, pointed wings for you!

But although the red trousers are more visible in this last shot....
visit this latest post of Paul Newport "The Breckland Birder" to see what Tim was trying to capture!!

The sounds of summer

I was sitting in the hangar on Saturday pricking out seedlings when a familiar droning note caught my ear. A turtle dove streptopelia turtur tourterelle des bois! This sound, along with the calls of swifts heard for the first time this year on Friday, says "summer" to me. He was sitting in the walnut tree, a splendid male, his neck jewellery shining in the sun as he purred away. I called Tim, who got a few pictures obscured by branches before the bird flew down into the meadow on the other side of the millstream.

I carried on potting - you can't leave a tray of seedlings half done - and I could still hear the dove. The sound was coming from the ground, in the meadow. Then Tim was beside me, showing me a photograph of two turtle doves. Not bad going for half a day's work!

So you made it past Malta as well?

A wheatear and a wagtail

We've just had a visit from a member of a species we haven't seen here before - a female wheatear oenanthe oenanthe, traquet motteux. She sat nicely on the chimney pot for us, making sure we got a good view.

My goodness, that brickwork needs pointing...

Or in extra fuzzy closeup

From this angle, you can't see the white rump that gave this species its English common name "whitearse" gentrified into "wheatear", but other features such as the dark eyestripe with pale eyebrow (supercilium), the brownish-grey back with black wingtips, the peach-pink throat, and the dark beak, all characteristics of the female Wheatear.

It was particularly nice to see her because one of the many species of wheatear first got me actively birdwatching, more than simply being generally interested in Nature. In 1978 I visited Israel, youth-hostelling by bus, and found my way down to the Sinai peninsula, then occupied by Israeli forces. From the bus window I caught sight of a vividly-costumed small black-and-white bird. I had to know what it was, and realised that I hadn't really looked at it well enough to pick out the features that distinguished it from other related species. I did rather better with the Common Bulbul, the middle east's counterpart of the blackbird, with its black head and yellow bottom. I bought my first pair of binoculars and then I was hooked.

And yesterday we had a visitor of another species new to our records at La Forge - a Yellow Wagtail motacilla flava flavissima Bergeronnette flaveole on its way to the British Isles or the Channel coast to breed. This smallest of all the wagtails comes in a number of subspecies in a range of colour variations. The subspecies that breeds in Britain is yellow below and olive-green on top including the head, and is generally paler than other subspecies. The subdued colour tones of our visitor suggests that it was a female. The Central European subspecies Blue-headed wagtail motacilla flava flava Bergeronnette Printanière has a slaty-grey cap and much more contrast between back and front.

This one was on the Kingfisher Trap* when I looked out to check on the moorhens' nest. It bobbed up and down and wagged its tail, demonstrating that it was not a chiffchaff. I fumbled for my camera, which was beside me, and when I looked up it had just taken flight and was heading down river. I last saw one of these just outside Reeth in the Yorkshire Dales (actually quite a party of these) so it's a little taste of home. 

Motacilla flava flavissima - Photo by Andreas Trepte

The olive-green back and head show up well in this fine picture of an adult female by Andreas Trepte. You can see more of his work on his website www.photo-natur.de Officially the English name for this subspecies is Yellow-crowned wagtail, which I don't get at all, and I've never heard anyone use it. The german names for this subspecies are Englische Schafstelze (English wagtail - OK, I get that) or Gelbkopf-Schafstelze (yellow-headed wagtail - no, they've done it again).

By contrast, this is a young female motacilla flava flava, bergeronette printanière. She wears a slaty grey cap, contrasting with the green of her back.

Motacilla flava flava - Photo by Wojsyl

This, the  mainland European subspecies, is known to English birdwatchers as the blue-headed wagtail.  My first and last sighting of one of these was at Spurn on a York RSPB outing rumpty-tum years ago. If you want to be really confused, these subspecies hybridise where their ranges overlap, so if you see a Yellow Wagtail near Dunkerque, just hope it goes away...

Massacre on Migration - Chris Packham's video diaries

Parts 1 and 2 of Chris Packham's video diaries of his mission in Malta can be found here. For more information, visit Chris's website www.chrispackham.co.uk.

Now you see it...

Here you can see a line of trees and shrubs....

Now you don't!

But, now you can't.... magic.... no!!

Eric, who now runs the Fauvellier farm, has been putting in a set of irrigation pipes....
as if we currently need it...Ha-ha!!
The source is a bore pipe in a field near their étang...
this will give them ground water, with the étang as a reserve.

All very interesting, yes....
but you are now thinking...
"What has that to do with the above pictures?"

Well Eric.... sensibly on his part... took advantage of having a big digger on site...
he removed a tree and shrub line that divided one of the big fields...
from a smaller one and filled in the ditch!
It costs to get a digger in...
so use it whilst it is on site for another job.

It has been removed up to the neighbours garden.

But as you can see from the picture above....
the ditch, trees and shrubs formed a corridor toward the étang...
and then linked to the other side of the valley...
however...
it was the LAST such corridor from the nearby land South of us.

There are now no easy links between the wooded areas to the South...
with those on the Northern side of the valley...

It looks as though there is a link down by the Moulin de Chevernay...
but if you drive up into Chevernay, you rapidly discover...
that there are vast open fields on the flatlands beyond....
where, ten years ago, there was quite a lot of remnant hedge still standing.

The nearest easy links between the Aigronne and Claise valleys...
are now down by Gatault...
one and a half kilometres towards Grand Pressigny...
and up just before Chateauneuf...
another good kilometre from us towards Petit Pressigny...
where a big wood and then a set of small copses act as the link

A great shame... another chunk of habitat destroyed in the name of...
PROGRESS!!
The only real beneficiaries will be the raptors....
especially the Barn Owls and Harriers...
Hen and Montague's....
whose hunting habits require big flat open areas!

But small birds now have a big open tract to cross...
leaving them vulnerable to other raptors...
the Falcons and Hawks...
let alone the loss of nesting and feeding that the shrubby line gave.

And the small mammals will fare little better...
more open land to cross...
perfect for the Harriers and Owls!

Even some predators suffer...
flattened on the road just there the other day was a beautiful Pine Marten....
I thought it was a Fouine [Beech or Stone Marten]...
until Pauline questioned the colour.
We had a closer look on the way back....
and took photographs to record the loss!
Sure enough...
the colour on the neck was a rich cream and....
on close inspection...
the undamaged fur was too reddy-black.

Pine Martens have a huge territory...
upward of 80 square miles according to Collins "Mammals"*...
and martens, both types, move fast...
think weasel... and scale that up about five-fold.
The poor creature probably hesitated for that second too long....
trying to get its bearings!!

And all in the name of PROGRESS...
so that bigger machines have easier access!
Wildlife corridors are vital highways for the interaction of breeding groups...
the smaller the creature, the more vital it is to have easy links.
And I haven't yet mentioned the insects...
but poor fliers and habitual crawlers need habitat to almost touch....
or else their population becomes isolated and genetically, inbreeding can lead to....
disease resistance being lowered...
poor reproduction rates...
and eventual extinction of that population.

And, in the name of PROGRESS, the world becomes a poorer place.
I am not against progress...
I just want people to take into account what their actions might mean...
and try and create alternatives...
like a line of trees and shrubs...
or a hedge...
down either one of the sides of the road to Favier...
seventy-five metres further along.
But that will never happen...
there are no financial incentives...
no "rewards"...
no altruism, either!!


* "Field Guide - Mammals (Britain and Europe)" David Macdonald and Priscilla Barrett [HarperCollins 1993]

Disgusted??... we are!!

Chris Packham is currently in Malta to highlight the slaughter of birds that goes on every migration...

........................LEGALLY!!

Malta got an exemption many years back from the EU Birds Directive....
but some of the birds mentioned in the BBC article are not even edible!!
Please read this BBC Article...
but make sure you have an empty stomach...

This would normally be in the "Spotted on the Web" section...
but Pauline and I feel that it is worthy of its own immediate Blog Post!!

Owl Howl...

More owl news....
all day yesterday, Pauline was hearing a Tawny Owl calling in broad daylight.
Now this usually occurs if it is being mobbed....
but normally stops when it gets fed up and moves off.
Either this one had something to stick aroud for....
or whatever was rattling its cage wasn't very effective!

Then last night on our return from Yzeures...
see the previous post...
were three calling round us...
two males and one female.
They appeared to be flying around as they called...
and there was us thinking that we'd certainly got a pair...

Then less than twenty minutes ago...
I saw one of them!
Pauline is in the hangar [Dutch barn] sowing seeds...
I went to talk to her and just as we began talking...
a large Tawny left the Kestrel box I put up last year and flew across our orchard and vanished into our most wooded area.
That was at 1:10 PM French time...
a lovely sight...
but unfortunately the closest view for me only...
Pauline was concentrating on sowing and only heard the rustle and clip of its claws on the box as it left... she looked up to see it going away over the verger!!
No pix... no camera in hand

As we said in the nestbox post....
birds choose where they want to nest...
despite the best efforts of box builders!!
 The box isn't being used as a roost...
Tawny Owls like to perch upright!!
And... going on the books, the box is the wrong shape entirely!!
However, they have been observed using old crow's nesting platforms...
we just hope that we've not disturbed "her"!

"She" must have been very nearby yesterday as well...
Pauline kept hearing a raptor call that sounded a bit like a buzzard...
but wasn't right...
and it was also, like the Kingfisher...
at a frequency that I can no longer hear*...
and she heard it again as the owl flew off.

-----------ooo000OOO{}OOO000ooo-----------

*I was all too aware of my loss of some frequencies last night...
there were calls that were inaudible to me... and others where I couldn't hear all that was described.