Reserve Du Teich - France

A long weekend visiting friends in Arcachon near Bordeaux makes a visit to Reserve Du Teich (Twitter = @RO_Teich) essential, this place is amazing, the variety of birds is incredible, hardly anybody there and my favourite part...... dogs are not allowed!!

My last visit was back in October so I was looking forward to some sun walking around this time.  The visit started with some weird sounding Frogs, took me ages to realise what was making the noise.

 

First birds of the day where White Stork which nest at the reserve and are quite numerous.  It was great to see them with chicks in the nest.

 

White Stork

 

Even better was amazing close up views of Water Rail to the point they seem almost tame, the reserve has a very healthy population, when I walked around last October I counted no less the 20 birds calling. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to see them with young.... and so close.

 

Water Rail

 

There were numerous waders out on the scrapes, plenty of Grey Plover, Redshank, Black-tailed Godwit, Avocet, Black-winged Stilt (also all with young/on nests), Spoonbill and 3 Spotted Redshank.

 

Black-winged Stilt - on nest

 

Black-winged Stilt - with chicks

 

Spoonbill

 

Black-tailed Godwit

 

Avocet

 

My target species for today was Bluethroat for which the reserve is famed, however it wasn't meant to be, another species which is abundant and almost impossible to not see is the Nightingale, I saw 5 today, the first 4 I had what would be consider great views in the UK, i.e. they were about 1 metre away showing quite well but still obscured. I then found another which gave great views but at a distance.  I wasn't quite prepared for the one sat out in the open by the entrance to the reserve, I observed for over 20 minutes but had to leave to catch my train, my usual photographic prowess doesn't do the experience justice though.

 





Nightingale

 

I was fortunate enough to get a lifer today in the form of Blue-headed Wagtail.

 

Blue-headed Wagtail

 

Plenty of other species seen around the site including Black Kite, Marsh Harrier, Buzzard, loads of Kingfisher, a couple of photos of other animals seen.

 

Coypu

Great Crested Grebe

Red Squirrel

Terrapin

 



 













Hudwit

We had friends over at the weekend so I never thought I'd get out geeking the local patch never mind get a twitch in...

On the Saturday night I took some of them to a local badger sett which I'd been raving about, after waiting patiently for about 40 minutes I was convinced the badgers weren't going to perform, but then one was spotted outside the furthest hole.  We ended up having an adult and 3 cubs to watch which was awesome.

The following morning I was up at 06:30 and off to Somerset for the Hudsonian Godwit, there are some amazing photos of it on Twitter, this is not one of them...

Hudsonian Godwit

For those sharp eyed among you, if you combine that with great imagination you will of course by telling me the right hand bird is a Ruff, you obviously don't need me to tell you due to my mastery of the camera, that the bird in the centre is the Hudsonian Godwit.

I had a few NFY's which is always nice, the first being a beautiful male Garganey, he was way too far out for me to entertain the idea of a photo.  I then had Bittern, Marsh Harrier, Hobby, Swift and Kingfisher.

Blackcap, Sedge Warbler, Cetti's Warbler, Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler and Whitethroat seemed to be in every tree trying to out sing each other.

Sedge Warbler

 Sedge Warbler

Whitethroat

Blackcap

 

This Woodpigeon was feeding her two chicks from her crop.

 

Woodpigeon

 

 On the way home I stopped at my local patch and found Swift again which was a patch tick, I didn't stay as the weather had turned.