Saturday, June 18, 2016

Posted on June 18, 2016 by frank

We started the day outside our hotel in Twann and added Serin to our list.

Serin, Twann, June 18, 2016

And had nesting Barn Swallows.

Barn Swallow, Twann, June 18, 2016

We headed west to the Fanel and Chablais de Cudrefin preserve and found the La Sauge Nature Center there instead (I told you the book was out-of-date). However, this was a terrific spot. We spent most of the morning there. It had woods, ponds, brushy areas and blinds at the ponds. Here are some of the birds we got there.

House Sparrow (they’re native here!), La Sauge Nature Center, June 18, 2016

Mute Swan (they’re native here!), La Sauge Nature Center, June 18, 2016

Great Tit, La Sauge Nature Center, June 18, 2016

Graylag Goose, La Sauge Nature Center, June 18, 2016

Gray Heron, La Sauge Nature Center, June 18, 2016

Common Kingfisher, La Sauge Nature Center, June 18, 2016

Female Blackcap, La Sauge Nature Center, June 18, 2016

Squacco Heron, La Sauge Nature Center, June 18, 2016

Wood Pigeon, La Sauge Nature Center, June 18, 2016

White Wagtail, La Sauge Nature Center, June 18, 2016

The Fanel area is adjacent to the Nature Center, but required a long walk. So Barb continued to bird the nature center while I walked down to the Fanel Preserve. My first encounter was a Cormorant rookery.

Great Cormorants, Fanel, June 18, 2016

A little farther down, I spotted some Red-crested Pochards.

Red-crested Pochard, Fanel, June 18, 2016

Down near the observation tower, a Nightingale flew up from the pathway and landed on a post.

Nightingale, Fanel, June 18, 2016

I added Black-crowned Night-Heron and Little Egret to the list and saw some terns way out, but couldn’t identify them. The common corvid the past three days has been Carrion Crow, but they have proved difficult to get close to for photo ops — until today. On the walk back, three of a flock of four crows flew off, but one stayed and didn’t care that I was there!

Carrion Crow, Fanel, June 18, 2016

We headed further west to the Auried at Kleinbosingen — a nature preserve of ponds, fields, marsh and woods. Although we saw Little Grebes at La Sauge, this one here was more cooperative.

Little Grebe, Auried at Kleinbosingen, June 18, 2016

It was also a good place to look for raptors. As mentioned in a previous post, pulling ff the roads here is almost impossible, so most of the hawks we have seen have been fly-bys. By the way, Red Kites are everywhere and half-a-dozen or more at times. At this location we saw Red and Black kites and Common Buzzard.

Common Buzzard, Auried at Kleinbosingen, June 18, 2016

Black Kite, Auried at Kleinbosingen, June 18, 2016

We also had a lot of frogs an toads.

Frog (species?), Auried at Kleinbosingen, June 18, 2016

Our triplist stands at only 44, but 33 lifers!

We are spending the next two nights in a hotel near Cugy, which is the village that barb lived in 53 years ago. So we will be exploring that a little bit in addition to our birding.

Zurich – Thursday and Friday, June 16-17, 2016

Posted on June 17, 2016 by frank

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).