Birdlife-Nature Park La Sauge, Crudrefin, Swizterland

Farmland, Estravayer-le-Lac, Switzerland

This is a continuation of the previous post's trip. I'm a bit behind in posting but will catch up as I have a lot more travel coming up. Someday I swear I'll get this blog back in real time but one does have to work to support one's travel habit.

Farmland, Estravayer-le-Lac, Switzerland

The Alps in the distance.

This morning I awoke with the sun. I went wandering the area around Chateau de la Corbier. I stood and admired the mountains rising in the distance beyond huge wooden Swiss barns. And then I watched two horses in their field for a while, the first light of the sun glowing on them. I enjoyed the scent of sun warmed horse and listened to the unmistakable sounds of them ripping at grass and chewing it. Then I found kittens scampering through the inn's gardens.

Roman snail (aka escargot)

I then headed out and drove to Crudrefin and Nature Park La Sauge, on the northwestern edge of Lake Neuchatel to wander the paths there in search of birds and other creatures among forest, wetland, and Switzerland's largest reed belt.

If you know the name of this species let me know.

On the nature trails and from the bird hides I saw Roman Snails, two kinds of frog whose chorus was incredibly loud, and then many birds including Graylag geese, Mallards, Little Grebes, Coots, Gray Wagtail, White wagtails, Western Yellow wagtails, Common Greenshank, Marsh sandpiper, Black Redstarts, Carrion Crows, Mute Swan, Cormorants, Blue Tits, Willow or Coal Tits (can't tell the difference yet), European Goldfinches, Common Kingfishers (whose jewel tones are not common at all), Blackcaps, and Scottish Highland Cattle (who are there as natural lawn mowers). There was also a nesting Fieldfare, who never sat still in her nest. Seemed sort of exhausting, really.

Greenshank

Mallard drake in breeding colors

Fieldfare on its nest

I then wandered down the nearby canal that boats use to travel from Lake Neuchatel to Murtensee toward Lake Neuchatel where the reed belt lies. I passed a field full of piglets. Really, there were hundreds of them, charging about through the field and generally making a nuisance of themselves getting underfoot of their rather huge mothers.

Boat going down the canal

A very small part of the field full of pigs

Sow

Then I was out in the reeds, where there is a good bird hide. I met some fellow nature nerds who had caught a glimpse of what they called a River Thrush but I'm suspecting it was a River Warbler, which was causing much excitement and consternation as its hard to spot. It moves like a rat through the reeds, rather much like American waterthrushs, who are also rather hard to spot since they tend to hang out in places humans can't get to easily. I'm not sure I saw it. I saw something that moved fast through the reeds, but I also saw Stonechats fluttering and singing away in the reeds and watched a Dormouse run up a reed and back.

Past the pigs and out toward the reeds

Just a tiny bit of the sea of reeds...and somewhere in there is the River Warbler.

Then I drove back to Basel and it was back to work the next day.