I see no birds

Our French tutor invited us on a bird watching day at Campestre. It was to be an early start. We had to meet at 7am which meant we had to be up by 5am.

We duly arrived at the rendezvous and waited as a slow trickle of other enthusiastic bird watchers arrived, the day before it had rained quite a bit and the weather this morning was very damp a thick mist hung over the valley where we were supposed to be able to see the birds.

A decision was made by the organisers to move to another location. We all jumped in our cars and headed off in a convoy down the road. We arrived at our next location still no birds, back in the car again and we arrived at our third location, after a few minutes of scouring the skyline a bird was spotted returning to its nest, I hastily scanned the sky back and forth but saw no bird, everyone was ooing with delight. But I sadly missed it, my binocular skills are not what they used to be. We waited for a while and then it was thought that if it was the female bird returning to the nest then she may well stay put for a while longer.

Exhausted we returned to the bird centre and watched slide shows of other birds of prey and we went on a guided walk around the surrounding area, we learnt quite a bit of the history of the countryside and how the landscape has changed over the years.

Then it was time for lunch and a well deserved rest before we headed off on another bird finding walk. It was a very pleasant stroll through some very pretty countryside, a narrow path meant that a lot of it was done single file. After what seemed like a long walk we came to a fork in the path and could not see the leaders of the group, we then discovered who we thought was our bird watching expert was merely another bird watcher following the person in front. A decision was made to turn back as we were obviously lost! After quite a long walk we came to a clearing and found the rest of the group leisurely resting on the grass with a collection of birds flying above. How we got lost I will never know.

The evening was spent back at the centre where a bar had been arranged and Jazz music by le Dixie Gang du Vigan

The day was a very enjoyable one and one I would like to repeat again, this time hopefully I will see more birds.