Yesterday my daughter told me she’d seen storks out by the Divonne exit of the motorway. It was raining, as usual this year, but I grabbed my camera and got out there. Sure enough in the field by the motorway, on the Swiss side, there were loads of them. Sheena counted 28 in the first flock, about 300m from where we parked. There was a second flock of about 40 much further in. I set off to get nearer. The field was soaked and I was almost wading to get nearer. They all looked very scruffy and are certainly resting in the course of their long journey back to Northern Europe. Of course they decided to escape the paparazzi and as I approached, one by one, they took to the air. Flying off to join the larger congregation half a kilometre away. The wingspan is really impressive!

Here are some of the pictures I managed to take.

Someone who looks at my pictures, (rather than just taking them ), noticed the tracking tag on the leg of one of the birds. They sent me a link to https://whitestorkproject.org/. This site deals with British tagged birds who are tagged in the Cotswolds. One of our birds has a tag AEP61. I have not been able to find the origin of this tag.

For 50 years I’ve been confidently calling a small, round, black, water fowl with a white splash on its beak a “Moorhen”. Well you know fine that it’s a coot! This illumination came after my last weeks walk round Divonne lake. This week I was lucky enough to see a small, round, black, water fowl with an orange splash on its beak. Now that’s a Moorhen. Unfortunately the photo I took came out poorly so I’ll have to go back for another shot. I was lucky enough to see a young moorhen and it didn’t run away too fast for me. It, of course, is not yet sporting it’s beak decoration.

The Goosander was determined to run away too, so I only managed a rear end shot

Also got a sight of a grebe. They are very shy and stay at least 100m off-shore. I’ve posted a fuzzy image of the female in her drab winter plumage. Again I need to have another walk round, or borrow a kayak!

I stopped to snap a crow, as I realise there is not a photo on my feathered friends page. That’s rectified.

My family very kindly took out a mortgage to buy me a new camera.

I now have a Nikon Coolpix P950. Although slightly larger than the Canon because of the large lens, it is compact in the case and easy enough to transport. It’s zoom is much more powerful than that of the Canon which is great for capturing birds. Of course the reasoning was to get me out of the house again.

I have very few pictures of inland water birds. Or to put it simply I don’t even have a picture of a duck. So I went to the Geneva nature reserve by the parc des eaux vives to see the ducks there. It is a lovely spot and even in January I was able to get some nice shots of Coots, Mallards and Tufted ducks.

Spoiling for more I took a walk around the lake at Divonne. At first I was disappointed by the very few birds on the water. However, I was able to broaden my knowledge, recognizing Gadwalls on the walk out. Coming back past the “beach” I saw why there was virtually nothing on the water. The pontoons were crowded with Herons, Cormorants and Grebes.

There were a number of common birds missing from my inventory so I’ve added them in. Notably the very attractive pigeon!

Over the years(!) I’ve often told people that I have a picture of such and such a bird on my web site. The problem is that when you land on a blog page you don’t immediately have an easy way to find the blog that contains a given bird. To address this I have made the landing page a complete alphabetic list of all the my photos. The next thing might be to then add links back to the original post for anyone interested. A little time will be required 🙂

There are a few notable absences from the list. I seem never to have taken a photograph of a Duck (Mallard) for example, nor of a Pigeon. I shall keep my eyes peeled for these rarer birds.

I started this blog in 2016. It has been a great journey and I’ve really loved sharing what we’ve seen together. There will be new things. We get hints of feathers we’ve not seen before. But it takes some time to put together the rarer things. I guess patience is the main lesson in photography.

Just for fun I gathered up what I think are my top ten photos, not in terms of wonderful birds, but in quality of shot. Because I want to push that aspect of what I do and refine my composition and image quality skills.

These are in no particular order but if one really stands out you can let me know.

Robin/Rouge-gorge

House sparrow/Moineau de maison

Puffin/Macareux

Magpie/Pie

Kestrel/Crécerelle

Jays/Geais

Heron/Héron

Green finch/Pinson vert

Black kite/Milan noir

Blue tit/Mésange bleue

Redstart/Rouge-queue

Long-tailed tits/Mésanges à longue queue

Greater spotted woodpecker/Grand pic épeiche

Okay. More than 10. I’ve added the French names (I think, corrections bien venues). I’m always embarrassed that I can’t talk to my neighbours about what I’ve seen.