Wow, wow and thrice wow

Our profound thanks to our friends Martin and Denise for alerting us to the sight of the year - migrating cranes coming in to their overnight stopover in the Brenne. This is just a quick post and we have all the videos (with stereo sound) and Tim's photographs to come.
If you can, GO TOMORROW!!!!

We've visited l'Étang de la Mer Rouge many times without seeing much. Our friends had visited on Tuesday and were raving about it - would the birds all have gone on? We saw not one crane as we pottered around the Brenne this afternoon. However at La Mer Rouge I caught the sound of a few calls on the wind.

At last (4:20ish) parties of cranes started to fly in. Lots of cranes. They milled around a bit - and flew on! Just over the wooded hill on the other side of the Étang.

Should we go or should we stay? We went. We found them again near the chateau de Bon Asile down a dead end off the D20, which turned out on further map study to be a continuation of the Chemin rural du Blanc that leads past La Mer Rouge. There were a few hundred cranes in the fields opposite the house but the incredible noise hinted at many more on the far side of the hedge.

Still they were restless. Tim spotted an osprey perched on a post in the middle of the field. A murmuration of starlings happened. Then...

Then the cranes took off en masse. Thousands of them. They were streaming back towards La Mer Rouge. What a sight! Both of us switched our cameras to video and filmed until we could no longer hold up our hands. Still they came  past.

Another dash, this time back to La Mer Rouge in rapidly failing light, and the cranes were visible as grey bands on the far bank. Marvellous!

But why thrice Wow? We were just eating our tea back home when I thought for an instant that one of the cameras had started playing a video by itself. I could hear cranes. I could hear cranes outside! Two large parties were circling up there, one above us and one above Grandmont or La Jarrie. No idea how many, it was pitch dark, but there were easily several hundred, going by the racket, and could have been as many as a thousand. And they were looking for somewhere for a little R&R. Forty minutes later, we heard them again. I think as I write this that they are just along the valley...

Update: 11,500 cranes were counted in Indre the following morning.

A further update [Sunday 16th at 11AM]:
We missed them... but there have been parties and singles seen over our region...
yesterday, we saw a group of twelve flying south-east....
in the direction of the Brenne...
and a singleton flying west...
the weather has bottled them up... and yesterday Grus-Grus reported...
that from Indre...
"plus de 35 000 grues sur les dortoirs en Brenne, ce qui constitue un nouveau record"...
so the spectacle goes on...
and will stay this way until the weather improves!

Cranes fly backwards

On Tuesday 12th March a group of 23 cranes were seen over Luxembourg flying southwest in continuous snowfall... And 503 cranes were spottted similarly "retromigrating" over Marburg, Germany. Given recent TV weather pictures, I can't blame them!

Grues in the News

Out of the sun...

This weekend's influx of cranes moved La Nouvelle République to include an article in Thursday's Touraine Est edition with some interesting facts along with the usual purple prose. My attempt at a translation follows.

When the common cranes pass by ...
After a dreary winter, one looks out for all possible signs of the return of spring. And in that matter, nature has been particularly generous in the last few days. Numerous Tourangeaux have been able, notably on Monday afternoon, to observe impressive flights of cranes on spring migration.

"more than a metre long and with a wingspan up to 2.4 metres"

Several thousand of these big birds (more than a metre long and with a wingspan up to 2.4 metres), crossed the skies of Touraine on Monday afternoon, provoking marvelling comments from those who had the luck to see them. "Superb and extraordinary", "Grand spectacle", "It's magical, nature!", one could hear from witnesses, their eyes riveted towards the sky. Every year, it's the same ritual: the common cranes (Grus grus), which have wintered in southern Spain and Morocco, fly back to their nest sites (Denmark, Scandinavia, Poland, Russia) following a corridor about 200km wide which crosses our region via Indre, Cher, southern Loir-et-Cher and the Loiret, brushing Indre-et-Loire, where it is not rare to see flights. What is much more, by contrast, is the scale the phenomenon took this year.The atmospheric conditions of these last few days (strong east winds) have effectively shifted to the west the course of the birds.
The migration began in mid-February in Spain where it reached an end, according to observations, last Sunday. In Indre-et-Loire, the first flights were spotted on 18th and 20th February. After, nothing more, or almost, until Sunday, when about fifty cranes were seen near Villeperdue [not counting the ones we saw].
And it was Monday when the major part of the troupe passed by. The first sightings took place about 12:30 at Bossay-sur-Claise, the last at Neuillé-Pont-Pierre at 8pm. Between these times, several thousand birds flew over the Tours area, notably in the end of the afternoon. On Tuesday, a few latecomers (the gruppetto?) followed the peloton at a good distance.

God speed big birds!

At the same time, one could have seen several dozen white storks, notably over the Bretonnières lake at Joué-les-Tours, and some greylag geese.
Definitely, that has the whiff of spring! Except for the swallows: we must wait a little longer for them...

And not stopping for a weather check!!

The Daily Bugle... full story!

Posted just after midnight... so yesterday is Sunday and this report is for Monday 4th...
Blodger was playing up like crazy.

It's been a good couple of days for the sighting of Common Crane [Grus grus] Grue cendrée...

Four of the sunset flight today!

Yesterday at around 2:30pm a flight of 58 birds...

followed today by a flight at around the same time of 61 birds, well split up...

then... another flight at 3:28 of 70 individuals in two groups...

we then heard but didn't see birds at 4:30'ish and towards 5pm.

A tremendous noise at 6:10pm heralded a flight of 100 cranes, split into two groups flying almost together...

Wither goest thou?

and then to cap it all... at 6:25 a flight of 31 came flying out of the sunset... straight over us.

Out of the sunset they came!

Wing tips shining in the setting sun...

But it wasn't over... after dark I was busy building bee nestboxes for the solitary bees and heard three more groups before 8pm!


262 birds seen today...
plus who knows how many were in the groups we heard?
A major movement through our area...
never observed such a continuous succession of flights in one day before.

The wind was from almost due South all day and, in the constant sunshine, the temperature peaked at 18.5 °Centigrade at around 5pm.
They must have thought it was the perfect day to move on!

The big Carpenter bees were out... scouting for holes...
Pauline heard a Skylark practising...
I put up a pair of Sandpipers from the middle of the meadow...
not sure which of Green or Wood they were...
both have white rumps and both are here at this time of the year...
they jinked away too fast...

And we got some nestboxes up...

T'was a grand day, Grommit!!

Can spring be far behind?

At last we have had some weather that permits us to sit outside with a cup of tea in the afternoon, to hang out some washing, to do some tree work in the meadow.

After lunch yesterday* we were doing the first of these when an unmistakable braying was heard.
Cranes!#      

The moon provided a good backdrop to the last pictures.

A small flight was coming along the ridge opposite our house, between the Aigronne and Claise valleys. Tim "rushed" into the house to get his camera, as fast as he could go while wearing "the wrong trousers" - chainsaw protection - while I kept an eye on the flock, which was heading into the wind and not progressing terribly fast.

A bit blurry... I had the camera on Manual focus and forgot!

 
Tim fired off as many pictures as he could as the flock swirled around to follow the Aigronne, and I looked at them down the wrong end of Tim's binos (dammit - I'll get used to them one day).
Tim reckons he can count 52 birds in the group - much easier with digital cameras!

Better this shot... but still not the best I've taken! But you can count them...

 
Now to report the sighting to the LPO Champagne-Ardennes group which is coordinating records of crane migration in Europe and parts south and east.


For another rarely seen, large, migratory bird please follow this link to Niall & Antoinette's "Chez Charnizay" "erm? Non- Grue" post... and they saw grues yesterday, too! And got some smashing pix!!

# Crane (Grus grus) Grue cendrée

* Wednesday 20th