Short Break to Normandie

After Mig-Week in Yorkshire Jackie and I spent a few days at home before we headed off to Normandie as we had to use up our ferry tickets which we purchased back in 2020 for our crossing from Poole to Cherbourg.  We didn't have the best of weather sunshine and showers I think sums it up pretty well.  Though it enabled us to do a couple days of birding and visit friends which we hadn't seen since before covid hit. 

For our first couple of days we stayed at Crasville a small hamlet near the coast which gave us access to drive to a few of our favourite places for birding. Gatteville-Le-Phare, Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, Domaine De Beauguillot, La Pointe de Brevand, Géfosse-Fontenay and the  

Ponts Douve, Carentan les Marais. We saw 88 species in what was two and a half days of birding not too bad but if the wind was in the right direction we would have picked up more birds off shore but sea watching was poor.  

Cattle Egret - en-route to La Pointe de Brevand © Nick Hull

The Domaine De Beauguillot is a wetland reserve unfortunately they are doing some conservation work on the reserve so a large area was closed off but we managed to scope over part of the reserve.  We found a large flock of Barnacle Geese also Golden Plover in with the Lapwing and what was really nice was we had two Zitting Cisticola 'zitting' around us.  It was nice to see them as they suffered a few years ago when the Beast of the East freeze hit France as well as us in the UK and Zitting Cisticola suffered badly in Normandie as did the Cattle Egret.  In fact around the polder that surrounds the La Baie des Veys we came across really good numbers of Cattle Egret with many of the grazing cattle herds.

Red-legged & Grey Partridge near La Pointe de Brevand

At>La Pointe de Brevand we had the usual common waders though the tide was out and the waterfowl were scattered over the the mud far and wide. So we headed to >Géfosse-Fontenay en-route I spotted a small covey of partridge of both Red-legged and Grey species which we don't often seen here. Looking out from the beach at >Géfosse-Fontenay the other side of the bay we found 5 Curlew Sandpiper amongst the usual many Dunlin, Ringed Plover, Redshank, Curlew Grey plover etc.  On our return to the cottage I noticed some egret in a field conveniently next to a layby. I quickly pulled in and took a look through the hedge and was surprised to see 9 Great White Egret and a Grey Heron all stood out in the field I assume they may have been migrant birds as I'm not aware of any breeding in the area. That evening at the cottage we heard Cirl Bunting singing in the adjacent field and we also heard it again the next morning.

Female/immature type Black Redstart - Gateville-Le-Phare © Nick Hull

Gateville-Le-Phare didn't produce much, as I mentioned earlier the wing direction wasn't right for good sea-watching, but we had a Peregrine hunting around the Lighthouse (Phare) and saw it catch something presumably a Turnstone or another wader which it carried off east.  We also had a female/immature type Black Redstart around the cottages and a very nice Wheatear with the Alba Wagtails on the rocks by the beach.

Northern Wheatear - Gateville-Le-Phare © Nick Hull

Our only other birding was with a friend in the forest in Calvados where she lives and we added Middle Spotted Woodpecker and Short-toed Treecreeper to our list which was a nice end to a short trip.