I managed to get out for a few hours today, helped by the fact that for once I held the moral high ground.  We had a few people round on Friday night and I cooked my one and only speciality, whilst my girlfriend “popped out” to get her nails done.  2 hours later she returned to find a frazzled me, cooking 2 pans of bolognese and doing the hoovering.

So, when she announced today she was touching up the paint in the kitchen I was off out birding.  Sorted.

Lachaussée was quiet, with no sign of last weekend’s mega find the Short-eared Owl was nowhere to be seen.  I think it might only be about the 15th record for Lorraine!  Unbelievable.  Madine was much better today as for once it wasn’t blowing a gale and peeing it down so I mostly faffed about with my digiscoping set up.  Nothing rare was found, just good numbers of Tufties, Goldeneyes, Great-crested Grebes and the usual thousands of Coot and hundreds of Mute Swans.  Here are the results of some camera faffing and some photos of last weekend’s big group of Cranes found just south of Madine in said gales and rain.

As well as the birds there are sometimes sightings of interesting Mammals when I’m out and about.  Here is one of the 5 or 6 Wildcats I’ve seen in the last year or so.

I should say that actually, I think it’s a Wildcat, if anyone disagrees, please let me know and also why it isn’t one as I’m keen to learn.

After 7 long months, I’m finally back connected to the internet so here are some photos from the last few months.

From the above title you can probably gather that I’m not one happy patching bunny.

As ever over the Christmas period birding time was going to be at a premium.  I had two days off on the 21st and 22nd, not much was doing on either local patch but I did catch up with the long staying and returning Rough-legged Buzzard just outside Verdun.  I think the original finder is right, it’s not a juv because the pale patches on the back of it’s ‘hands’ aren’t big enough and it appears to have a thin band on the tail just above the main thick black band.  I am in agreement that it’s therefore a female and IF it was indeed a juv last year, then it’s a second year female.  If not, God knows!

The reason for the tirade of Father Ted style swearing is because on the 27th of November my anti-twin returned from the USA to pop out onto his former local patch of Madine.  I say anti-twin as he’s a French guy who when I arrived terrified in France, was just about to move, terrified, to the USA.  He even looked like me a bit, but not as good looking obviously.  Anyway, he popped back in to his local patch for a few hours and uncovered a Red-throated Diver, a Red-necked Grebe, 2 Beared Tits, a Merlin, a Great Grey Shrike a drake Feruginnous Duck and a 2nd year White-tailed Eagle, as opposed to the usual returning adult.

Fast forward to the 31st and I had negotiated a free afternoon of birding.  The weather gods intervened by sending a lovely cold strong wind and occasional drizzley showers.  That therefore and not total and utter incompetence is definitely the reason that I proceded to see none of the above.

Fast forward again to being back in work today and an opportunity to check my e mails at lunchtime (ahem) to find that just before I arrived in the early afternoon on Saturday, someone had also had a male Snow Bunting in the port area of the lake twice in flight and once down to two metres on the slipway at the top of which I parked my car.  My mind now thinks back to the black and white thing I saw in flight and dismissed as just a Pied Wag as it shot through my periferal vision in the strong wind.

D’oh and feck, feckity, feck!!!

The good news is that from this low point of missing everything my luck then improved when I arrived at Lachaussée to hopefully see some Cranes and Hen Harriers coming in to roost.  I got at least 2000 Cranes and 3 HH’s.  The Cranes were incredible, about 500 were first to arrive in three or four small groups and from the bugling that greeted them, there were already a substantial number of birds already in and roosting.  Then as I slowly walked back to the car the noise of flighting Cranes was incredible.  I assumed that the whole roost had been spooked by something, but that was not the case, it was hundreds and hundreds more birds arriving from the opposite direction, there must have been at least a thousand circling in ragged groups over the roost site and slowly dropping in to land with the others.  A spectacular end to a disappointing day of dipping.