Tuesday 10 April 2018

Red Crested Pochards and Stilts

The Spring floods are turning up some interesting migrants. An unexpected discovery this morning was a pair of red-crested pochard lurking at the edge of the flooded Bandiat near Vielles Vaures. This is the first time I have seen this species in France, never mind Charente. Also present there was a pair of migrating little grebes, a coot and two moorhen which were probably also on the move.

A few minutes earlier I had a look at the Tardoire and watched two black-winged stilts feeding close to a great white egret. The latter are now a relatively common sight in our department but I have not seen stilts here since the last flooded Spring a few years back. It’s a fascinating conjecture as to where these unusual birds are travelling to and from.

There was not much else at either site except for lots of swallows, a few house martins, four green sandpipers and four white storks which had been flushed by a gyrocopter. I note that another observer reported yellow wagtails at The Tardoire but I didn’t see any.

Yesterday evening as I returned from a walk, I heard my first stone curlew (thick knee) of the year calling from the field opposite my house.

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