Urrrrg! Grey... no fishing.

This is the view from the bedroom window this morning... in fact all this morning and into the afternoon!

Somewhere, beyond the trees, is a wood!

I sat there, in bed, watching pigeons and jays come into view... and out of view... especially the pigeons who were flying found in circles... at one point a flight of grey ghosts flew past the other side of the trees.... urrrrg! Grey...

We were going to Le Louroux this morning for the "Grand Emptying"....
but visibility was very poor, as you can see, and the temperature outside was only zero centigrade...
it reached a whole three by noon!!

Also my shattered ankle was telling me that the weather was damp [as if I couldn't work that out for myself!]....
so with shooting paines [oops, Freudian slip there... thinking of fireworks to brighten the day] shooting pains making driving difficult we stayed in.

However, I did find some photographs of the Golden Plover/Lapwing flock I mentioned in the last post... taken in March 2010.... so here they are:

Click to enlarge these... the Golden Plover are the pale birds... and you can see why the Lapwing is also the Green Plover.

About a quarter of the way from the left in the first picture... and a third in on this... is a breeding plumage Golden Plover.

And in this picture he has walked fully into view... just at the bottom, in the group of three,  on the left...
he has a black belly, and a white patch just under the golden back.

Not my best pictures, but these were still a way off!

.... more on the arrival of Winter.

...as promised more observations on the arrival of Winter.

Flocking tits...
flocking jays...
flocking pigeons...
flocking Goldfinches...
in fact,
flocking everything!

The birds are flocking, a winter trait among many species...
and we have large flocks of corvids... crows and jackdaws... 
milling around....
suddenly....
a tree will appear to loose all it's upper leaves...
and the 'leaves' leaving turn out to be a huge flock of Goldfinches that were blending in with the remaining foliage.

Simon of "Days on the Claise" observed last year a flock of corvids playing in the wind... and, despite the recent rain, our corvid flocks have been doing the same! Susan blogged about the same sort of  behaviour here in 2008.

The flocks of Lapwings are getting noticeably larger and the tit numbers are much larger than a week or two ago... and the warblers that were with them then seem to have moved on.

But perhaps, amongst all these flocking birds, the most spectacular have been....
the Wood Pigeons...
swirling flocks of a couple of hundred...
taking twenty or so minutes to pass the bedroom window...
when they are strung out as they move from one recently harvested maize field to another....

A very small part of a strung out movement of pigeons... open it in a separate window to view the numbers.
(I took three pictures to try and show the length... but they didn't stitch together.)

or in swirling clouds as they descend for a break in the poplars at the end of our meadow...
and then, without warning, exploding outward in all directions...
before assembling again, swirling around and settling...
a raptor had passed, probably, but I'd missed that.

Could have been the female Sparrowhawk...
or even one of...
or more probably, the local Goshawk.
We have had the occasional Peregrine...
all of which would love a tasty pigeon breast!
And it is the raptors that 'cause' the flocking...
it is a winter survival trait...
with the swirling mass it is difficult for the raptor to target an individual...
fish shoal for the same reason, but not seasonally.

Now we are watching out for the Cranes... they are on the move... a few flights have passed through Limousin... but they are massing at the Lac du Der to the north... 40,000+! So they are on their way south, too.

Flocking Committees!

I was sitting in bed this morning with a mug of tea, watching the birds out of the window, when one of the flocks of Lapwings (or Green Plovers or Peewits if you are so inclined) muddled into view.
They seem to be birds of committee status... or a collections of politicians.

They were flying to the right... initially.... but then two decided to head back the way they'd come.
A few more followed them and then the rest of the flock...

First they flew to the right....

then they flew to the left...

No, wait.... at least three haven't followed... they are ploughing on steadily towards the right.
About turn the rest of the flock... they'd decided.

...then to the right. Again!

But...
they had not yet come to a firm decision...
one, then a further two, then a group started to fly back the way they'd come...
and again the rest of the flock followed...
everyone this time!

No... a breakaway group from the middle went right this time! Followed by....

...the rest!

This happened about four more times... before, quite suddenly, as they were all flying left, as one they turned and flew strongly off to the right and disappeared behind the trees.

A few minutes later a smaller group flew left to right without wavering at all.
Flocking committees!*

There's always a rebel in any committee!

*A committee is a dark corridor up which ideas are lured and quietly strangled!

I bet you can't do this!

Every autumn, flocks of lapwings (vanellus vanellus) vanneau huppé appear on the newly-ploughed fields up and down the Aigronne, taking flight at the least alarm and keeping in contact with each other by means of their "peewit" calls. At the moment, there are usually a few starlings (sturnus vulgaris) étourneau sansonnet with them, and later in the year, golden plover.

Just a small part of a larger flock.

There are bigger flocks in France than in the UK because farming methods over here are more favourable to their breeding cycle. Just north of Amiens we stopped and took pictures of a flock of over a thousand... it was an amazing sight!

Just part of the huge flock seen in October 2005... too big to capture in one shot!!

They are always worth a few pictures on a sunny day, with their white underparts flashing as they swirl aroud over their chosen feeding spot. This year Tim's photos caught one bird in the middle of a barrel roll, flying upside down....

Hey guys! Can you do this?

Flapwings

Yesterday we realised that a small party of lapwings vanellus vanellus was working away in the young winter wheat of the field next door. According to the Word Origins website, the name "lapwing" is derived from the same roots as "leapwink", and describes the way the bird jinks and tumbles in flight. The name may also refer to its habit of trying to lure a predator away from its nest by staggering about trailing a "broken" wing.

Lapwing in the Brenne

The lapwing is known by other names. Peewit mimics its instantly recognisable call. Green Plover? well, the feathers of its back have a green sheen, and it's a member of the plover family, but what a boring name! The French name Vanneau huppé refers to the lapwing's punk hairstyle. Take all the names together and you have a crested, green-tinted plover that makes a noise like "peewit" and has a tumbling flight - that's just about right.

There were only six lapwings in our little party. One of our lasting memories of our voyages between the UK and France is of a flock of several thousand lapwings with golden plover in a field just north of Villers-Bocage, near Amiens in the wide-open spaces of the Somme département of Picardie. The pictures that follow are just a sample.


That was at the end of October 2005. Every time we passed that way, we looked out for them but never saw them again. With changes in farming methods the population is diminishing all over Europe. According to the RSPB, since 1960 lapwing numbers have decreased by 80% in England and Wales. Major declines are also reported in France, but without a baseline covering the whole country, observers are unwilling to be quite so specific. The Brenne is one of the premier sites for lapwing in winter, and that area at least is managed sympathetically for both wildlife and humankind.

A mixed flock of plovers... Green & Gold

Various flight views

More views of the mixed flock... there is a Golden Plover in flight with this group.