Bird spotting

I’d planned for us to do a short walk to an observatory near to the Lac ‘d’Orient. It’s a beautiful spot with a well built hide. Unfortunately though, as we turned off into the forest to park up in the car park, we were stopped by some serious looking soldiers. They had a 4wd hidden in the trees with two soldiers in it, and a motorcyclist standing next to his bike on the road leading to the car park. A fourth soldier approached us, and explained there was a wide scale military operation happening in the area, and we would not be able to access this part of the forest today.

‘Oh well’, we thought, that’s scuppered that. But not wanting to be defeated, Brian and I both looked at the maps on our phones, and could see another ‘hide’ over looking the lake. We hadn’t been there before, but today seemed like a good one to try it. I looked at our ‘outdoor active’ map and could see a circular walk near it, so we headed off in the car to the direction of where the walk started.

It was a delightful and well marked trail, with unusual large, oak doors along the way to make you aware you were entering an area of natural beauty, and not to leave the track.

It felt good enjoying the spring air, and the stillness of the forest, and was at least as pleasant as the walk we originally wanted to do.

It wasn’t long before we arrived at the observation hide; a wooden building built on the edge of the lake.

We settled in, sitting on the wooden benches. We poured ourselves some coffee, which Lis’ had carried for us, shared out the banana bread I’d made, and spent a good 30–40 minutes just seeing what birds we could spot.

We were rewarded with sightings of Eurasian coots, cormorants, two kingfishers, and common terns. We also identified on our ‘Merlin’ bird identifying app a common fire crest, a dunnock, and an Eurasian Wren.

The walk back was just as pretty, and at a total of 7.2km was quite an achievement for me.