Baie de Somme! 23/04/2015

Another brilliant day across the channel with Tony and Trevor.

This Bluethroat was posing buy one of the hides being ignored by most the visitors.

Arriving at Calais around 06.00, I drove straight to the Parc de Marquanterre arriving soon after 07.00 despite getting a puncture on the A16 motorway. We then walked around the woods outside the park hoping and failing to see Black Woodpecker, though there were plenty of other birds to occupy us until the park opened at 10.00.
Inside the park it is very well laid out and managed, with apparently knowledgeable nature guides in most hides, though the design of the viewing holes in the hides leave alot to be desired. This probably does not matter to most the visitors and there are many of them, as very few seem to have binoculars or have much interest  However you can get good views of the birds, of which there are plenty.

This Stork nest is right beside the footpath!

Storks and Black-winged Stilts were plentiful, as were Spoonbills, all 3 Egrets, Greenshanks also seen Spotted and Common Redshanks, Common Sandpipers, Little Ringed Plovers, Garganey, a Smew, a Common Crane. In the bushes along the footpaths, Blackcaps, Common and Lesser Whitethroats, Willow Warblers, Sedge, Reed and Cetti's Warblers. A super reserve which we will definitely visit again. 

This Black-necked Grebe was posing on the roadside pools at La Bassee along with 6 Little Gulls, more Garganey, nesting Mediterranean and Black-headed Gulls.

By the time we got home we had clocked up 100 species with out really trying to hard.

One of 2 reeling Savi's Warblers we found around the Baie de Somme!