26th may 2007

Bird News

Our interest in wildlife in general, but birds in particular has really ‘taken off’ [excuse the pun] during the last two years of ‘freedom’ – so the following bits may be of interest….

• Black redstarts – the village is full of them!! They disappeared during the winter and came back in March. They even come onto the patio. In fact there is one sitting twittering on the telephone wires outside my window as I write
• Hoopoes – they are the ones with a long black beak, a fan shaped crest and they are very colourful. Mostly we catch just glimpses of them as they fly into or out of woodland – but on lucky days we see them up close. They appear to breed in this area and we love to catch sight of them – it’s become a kind of competition!!!
• Big Buzzards!?? – it’s now a project to try to be able to identify birds of prey. Sometimes it’s obvious, but often we see something big [very big even] and struggle!! There are some very big birds here, certainly they are not all buzzards! We have so far identified Black kites and Red Kites. There are Eagles but we need to be sure whats what here!! But the next one was a certain…..
• Griffon Vulture!!! – we went to the Tran Gorges for a day out earlier this month. We took the bird books as part of our ‘Big Buzzards’thing. As we approached the gorge, just as the road started to descend, something ENORMOUS started to circle in front of us. Paul stopped the car and we watched in amazement as this thing glided within about 20 yards of us. I frantically tried to decide which ‘big buzzard’ it could be, certain that it must be some kind of Eagle – but nothing matched and I blamed the book!! Later, we sat and watched it again – in frustration, I said to paul that the only thing in my book that it resembled was a Griffin Vulture and it couldn’t possibly be that so my book was firmly closed in disgust. We then went into the postcard shop which was stacked with postcards showing the Griffon Vultures which now live in that area……I WAS RIGHT!!! And it truly was an amazing sight.
• Osprey – having seen an Osprey pluck a fish out of the water at Castelsarrasin last year, I was on the look out for them again this year. So we were thrilled when we spotted one circling above us as we sat on the boat. Then we noticed something glinting as it caught the sun….it actually had a fish grasped in it’s claws!!! We watched it for some time until it finally dropped the fish and went off to try for another – wow!!

Re start

25^th May 2007

Hello again ‘bloggers’!!!

During the winter we seriously considered changing our ‘title’ to ‘Webbs do bob the builder’!!! But the house project is on hold now and we are once again heading for the high seas – well, the Canal lateral a la Garonne at first! The sailingthesea bit comes later….

The boat has been anti fouled, polished and cleaned; she was launched on 22^nd May and is once again ready for the off.

As blogging seems to be the easiest way to let lots of people know where we are and what we’re doing, we will try to keep up with regular postings again during the summer. Thank you for all the feedback [via emails] – it’s really good to know that we are being read!!! Watch this space……………………