June | 2016 | Frank and Barb’s Blog

In September 1962, Barb traveled to Europe and didn’t return until December 1964. She lived and worked in Switzerland, Austria (Innsbruck Winter Olympics!), Germany, and Luxembourg. The longest period of time in one place was Lausanne, Switzerland (Nov 62 – Feb 64), which is in western Switzerland, not far from Geneva. She has always wanted to return to reminisce and see what it looks like now.

So we have planned this trip as a birding trip with a pause in the middle down memory lane. We will be starting in Zurich, bird our way across northern Switzerland to Lausanne, look for her old stomping grounds, then on to the Camargure in southeastern France, bird our way back to Switzerland, across the southern half and back to Zurich.

The trip will be two weeks, and practically every bird we see will be new!

So here goes…

After an 8-hour flight from Newark, we arrive in Zurich around noon. Although we tried to sleep on the flight, we got very little. I had planned to visit three sites this afternoon, but skipped the last one, as we were worn out.

This first impression of this part of Switzerland is how much it looks like Pennsylvania — wooded hillsides and agricultural valleys! A slightly different mix of tree species (more conifers), but superficially the same. Also, the roads here are not birder-friendly — they are narrow and have no shoulders, so pulling off to look at a good (or great) bird is usually not an option. Although we are getting raptors, crows, etc. as we drive along, most of the birding is being done at “sites” from the Where to watch birds in Switzerland book (which is out-of-date).

Since it is the breeding season, seeing woodland birds was difficult at best. They were singing up a storm, but not knowing the songs (even though we tried to prep ourselves) made it very frustrating. Anyone who ever worked on a breeding Bird Atlas is familiar with this problem.

In spite of this, we saw a lot of birds (not enough!). We picked up a bunch of lifers the past two days and saw some AOU birds in a new light (Fieldfare, for instance).

We were totally wiped out last night (and the internet service at our hotel was laughable), so we did not get to the blog until now. Even tonight, it is almost 11 pm as I am writing this (6 hours ahead of EDT, by the way).

We will list our lifers and birdlist on another day as we reduce our itinerary (we bit off more than we could chew the first two days).

In the meantime, here is a gallery of photos so far (in no particular order).