New Sightings

Recently our daughter, partner and 2 children spent 10 days with us and one of our trips was to the Pont du Gard. We've been there many times and it never disappoints. This time we discovered the children's museum, which both Timmy, 10 years and Amélie, nearly 4 years old, both loved!

On the way home we realised that a Lilac Breasted Roller was flying some 20 yards away from our car and on a parallel course.

Gorgeous birds, both in flight and still, with plumage from lilac to an irridescent pale blue. Although we'd seen them quite frequently in Zambia & Kenya, we'd never before seen one in our part of France.

Seeing it brought back memories. About 2001 I was running courses with a colleague just outside Denver, Colarado. We were there for 2 weeks, so at the weekend hired a car to go up into the mountains. We visited an abandoned silver mine, forgotten the name, & in their art gallery came across a beautifiul picture of this Roller, taken by an American photographer in Kenya. We had it framed & it now hangs on our bedroom wall here in Mollans!

The second sighting was of a far less dramatic bird and required some investigation & luck over a week or so.

We first sighted a small brown bird with the posture and large eye reminiscent of a Robin. Bit of white in the wings, pale breast, nearly white at the throat; too slim to be a female chaffinch. We finally decided it was a female Pied Flycatcher. Today she sat on a branch near the birdfeeders long enough to get a positive identification. No sign of her more striking balck & white partner, but perhaps they have split up by now in the year?

Blue & Great Tits still active, we hear & se the Nuthatch frequently, and many of Collered Doves.

Happy Families

After a beautiful spring we've had storms & rain, which was much appreciated by the garden!

It hasn't slowed the birds down as they are producing families all over the place.

The Great Tits have returned to the old pot-bellied barbecue and raised a family and another pair have raised a brood in the nest box on the walnut tree.
I suppose that as we use the expression "to flee the nest" to mean leaving in a more or less permanent way we assume it's the same with birds, but not so!

The Great Tit young follow their parents around seemingly for weeks, demanding to be fed, preferably with live food; they are particularly demanding in the morning.

We saw parent Nuthatches also feeding their two offspring. One of the parents would take a sunflower seed from the bird feeder to its favourite "anvil" in the same tree, crack it open and feed the young with the kernel.

One evening we saw a strange bird near the feeders; Jo said it looked like a Robin from its size and stance, but it was brown and pale-brown shading to yellow. We checked in the book and it was, of course, a young Robin. Apparently they get their red breast at the end of the year!

The cherry trees have been laden with fruit, much more than we could hope to pick, though we did manage to get a lot. The birds loved the abundance, especially a Spotted Woodpecker, who would pick his cherry and fly off to eat it at leisure.

All is well with our birds save for the Ring Doves. One of our resident pairs was killed by next door's cat last autumn and now there appear to be three. This occasions much agitated fluttering and squawking, so we hope they'll settle it peacefully!

Back Again

I realised the other day that it's over a year since I last wrote my blog!

Memories of the last 12 months are a mixture of outstanding new events and a reassuring repeat of old ones.

Under new events was the sighting, while on holiday near Penzance, Cornwall last October, of a female Peregrine flying in from the sea, passing very close to us and then proceeding to make a pass over a tree, where a second, smaller Peregrine took off and they flew off together.

We assumed they were a pair, although I don't know if Peregrines have long term partners or not?

The winter here was fairly mild, but we still attracted hundreds of Serins & Siskins to the table and ground below, as well as our permanent family of Blue & Great Tits, Nuthatches, Chaffinches, Greenfinches, Hawfinches and a single Ring Dove.

The single Ring Dove was sad, as the next door cat took his or her mate, since when there doesn't seem to be a regular mate.

All our summer visitors are back; we've heard but not seen the Golden Oriole, seen Bee-eaters as well as Swallows, Swifts & House Martins.

The Great Tits are raising a family in the old barbecue and in a nest box we placed in a tree.

We had the house exterior walls cleaned last autumn and then painted with an exterior paint that inhibits moss. We also painted all the shutters. Despite all this our bats are back, not in very large numbers, but at least they don't seem to be put off by the paint.

After the painting we put up the nesting tubes for the Red Masonry Bees that my sister had given us and out of some 27 tubes, all but 4 are now filled.

We are toying with the idea of getting a couple of bee hives, if we can find an apiculturist to look after them. I think bees need help at the moment and it would help with the pollination of the vegetables in out patch.

Will write again soon!