Nature Watch Another familiar sight is the arrival of house martins (hirondelle de fenêtre) to nest under the eaves of buildings and the amazing swifts (martinets) that spend their lives on the wing, sleeping while flying. You can see and hear them as they perform their dazzling air displays as they catch their insect food. Swallows (hirondelle rustique) also turn up to settle into their nesting sites, which are mostly in farm buildings. Remarkably, the very same farm buildings they left last year! A special bird to lookout for is the hobby (faucon hobereau), a specialist predator that follows the martin/ swallow migration so it has fast food available en-route. The hobby Black redstart is a small, fast falcon that in flight looks like a large swift. It also likes munching on dragonflies and the sight of a hobby twisting and turning as it hunts is a incredible feat of One of the joys of living in this part of France is to be aerial acrobatics.
Birds and booze. The perfect combination
able to pursue two of your favourite hobbies at the same time. What better way to pass an hour than sitting in your garden watching the birdlife, while also sipping a cheeky little French wine. Graham Parish believes the trick is to look higher than your garden or bird feeder. Now is an ideal time for a bit of ‘twitching’ as the bird population is on the move. There’s the spring migration, when birds that over-winter here – like fieldfares (grive litorne), redwings (grive mauvis) and lapwings (vanneau huppé) – move from their winter feeding areas further north to their breeding grounds. At the same time, summer visitors start to arrive. Birds fly up from as far away as Africa to breed in this part France as there are good nesting opportunities and lots of food. Many of them are insect eaters like blackcaps (fauvette à tête noire), spotted flycatchers (gobemouche gris), wheatears (traquet motteux), whinchats (tarier des prés), redstarts (rougequeue à front blanc), nightingales (rossignol philomèle) and yellow wagtails (bergeronnette printaniere). They start to arrive in March or April and you can hear them singing as they set up their territory and look for a mate. The aptly-named chiffchaff (pouillot véloce) is usually the first to arrive and its distinctive call is a loud, repeated ‘chiffchaff’.
Listen out also for the unique oop, oop, oop sound of the hoopoe (huppe fasciée) and you may get a view of a beautiful bird that is now nesting more and more in our area. You can’t miss its call and distinctive crested plumage.
Hoopoe Even many garden birds are on the move in spring, so that blackbird Shelduck you’ve been watching eating winter berries may well move off and another one turn up. There are also some sea birds that make it inland, mostly gulls of varying kinds and common terns (sterne pierregarin), while cormorants (grand cormoran) are everywhere. If you live near a large expanse of water like a lake, you might also see the occasional sea duck, like a shelduck (tadorne de belon) or a garganey (sarcelle d’été). Lift your head from that glass of wine for a moment and you may be lucky enough to spot migrating birds that are simply en-route elsewhere. From my garden in the north of Mayenne, I’ve seen a flight of about a dozen cranes (grue cendrée) fly over in formation. I’ve also been lucky enough to see a montagu’s harrier (busard cendré), a rare bird of prey that nests in the New Forest in England but flies across our air space. Montagu’s harrier
Chiffchaff
These are birds of the countryside, but even if you live in a town centre there are plenty to look and listen out for. In virtually every town in this area you can hear a call like a short warble with a metallic jangle at the end. Look up and you’ll see a small bird with black plumage and a red tail flitting about on the rooftops. That’s a black redstart (rougequeue noir).
42 Mini’mag
Hobby
You may see huge flocks of birds that migrate in numbers for safety – like swallows – and you may even see a hobby tracking them. But even if you don’t spot many birds during an hour’s garden relaxation, you’ll still have the pleasure of that glass of wine!
To advertise in Le Mini'mag please call 02 99 91 59 77