As Cath was back in England and I had the weekend to myself I decided to go birdwatching.
Firstly on Saturday I went back to Parc de la Tete d’Or where the weekend before I had seen some sort of egrets on an island in the middle of the lake but without mes jumelles (binoculars) I hadn’t been able to make them out.
So this time with mes jumelles I looked for them. I saw a couple of little egrets (aigrettes) and a load of herons.
But then I found that your could get closer to the island by taking a tunnel under the lake. And then I saw that they were cattle egrets – les herons garde boeuf. Now as the name suggests, these birds usually live around cattle where they eat the flies that bother the cows.
But here they were in the centre of Lyon, high up in trees on an island on a lake. Bizarre.
On Sunday I headed to a series of lakes out near Lyon airport in a place called Meyzieu.
I took my scope and tripod and the list of birds that you might see there was promising – red kites, black kites, kingfishers, beeaters to name but a few.
I was set up to get some amazing pictures – but apart from the ever present buses (buzzards) this is the only bird I took a picture of. Le grebe huppé. Oh well. Le prochaine fois.
Thrown to (the) Lyon 