Come rain or shine, no matter what we were going to France, pick-up was 03:20am and by 08:00am we was at Sailly Bray in light rain !!
Sailly Bray is a well known site, in between Nolette & Bonnelle on the Rue du Marais and is a great site for Bluethroat. All the small birds weren't showing themselves in the rain and who can blame them we never got out the car !!
Richard spotted a Hen Harrier, as it came closer it looked very pale and was leucistic.
Hen Harrier
With our main target not showing and the rain getting harder we moved on to Crecy forest.
Forêt de Crécy
from Nouvion take the D111 towards Crecy-en-Ponthieu and you go right through it just take any of the tracks off in either direction, Here Black Woodpecker was the main target yet the rain just got even harder, but eventually eased off and was on-off showers we didn't see or hear the Black and had to settle for G.S.Woodpecker.
We did have some quality birds ...
Crested Tit ~ Hawfinch
Marsh Tit ~ Short-toed Treecreeper
Finally the weather started to change for the better and we headed for Le Crotoy on the D4 - Rue des Mouettes is some roadside pools mainly Black-headed Gulls but a pr of Garganey was a bonus.
Garganey
Nearer Crotoy is a track signed " Etang de Peche " this looked really promising, a quite hidden away lake.
White Wagtail ~ Redstart
Nightingale ~ Yellowhammer
With clear blue skies we now headed for Parc du Marquenterre which is well sign posted and even though it was late afternoon about 4-ish still had to pay full price to get in !!
By now the sun wasn't in our favour and where the Spoonbill's were landing to collect nesting material was into the sun, so had to make do with fly over shots ..
Spoonbill
Pochard
Mallard
White Stork
Here we never got any further than the scrape area which held very few birds.
Another last chance look in at Sailly Bray as the sun was shining alas no Bluethroat not for me, Kev had one !!
finished off with ...
Corn Bunting
Some new sites which we've now had a recce at for next time !!
No comments:
Post a Comment