Whilst spending just about two weeks in southern France for a holiday with my college pals, I may just now not withstand the temptation to sneak away one morning for a small birding time out. I found out the Coussouls de Crau whilst digitally scouting the area for birding websites a couple of months previous. As the one steppe in France, it provides some very thrilling birding alternatives. A couple of birds happen right here that experience an excessively limited distribution in France. Essentially the most thrilling species right here – and considered one of my favorite species in Europe – is the Pin-tailed Sandgrouse, which happens nowhere else in France.
Curiously, this house is a part of an historic riverbed of the Durance, which modified its route to float into the Rhône. Ahead of on the other hand, the river deposited massive volumes of pebbles and different rocks that along side an impentrable layer of minerals inhibits plant roots from having access to the groundwater, leaving in the back of a space with little or no plants. No less than this is how my now not so geologically-inclined mind understood the guidelines forums positioned alongside the tracks during the steppe.
I didn’t be expecting to be so lucky as I finished up being, as I noticed just about all of the goal birds I was hoping for: Pin-tailed Sandgrouse, Little Bustard, Little Owl, Tawny Pipit, and Iberian Gray Shrike. Every other great species integrated Pink-legged Partridge, Quick-toed Snake-Eagle, Stone-Curlew, Nice Noticed Cuckoo, Ecu Curler, Corn Bunting, and Eurasian Hoopoe.
Birding prerequisites weren’t as simple as I anticipated despite the fact that. I arrived at break of day and inside 2 hours, the warmth made viewing birds at a distance just about unattainable. Birds had been additionally reasonably shy, so I attempted in useless to get just right footage. The one first rate picture I were given used to be of a Tawny Pipit. Interestingly, it sat at the similar signal as some other picture I noticed on an E-bird tick list of the similar house. Obviously its an animal of dependancy. Or the dad or mum of the pipeline.
Eurasian Hoopoes had been reasonably commonplace in spaces with denser grass. I noticed a gaggle of six birds which appeared reasonably sudden to me. Their bouncing butterfly-like flight above the step used to be a beautiful sight, paying homage to the Wallcreeper I noticed in Germany previous this 12 months.
Iberian Gray Shrike isn’t thought to be a separate species by means of all government. Irrespective of it being a species or subspecies, this fowl with its dusky salmon-coloured breast and slender white eyebrow used to be a laugh to observe.
The one goal fowl I didn’t see used to be Calandra Lark. I had a number of possible perspectives of this species in South-East Europe a couple of years again so I might’ve truly preferred to get a just right sighting of this species, however this should stay up for the following commute.