by Derek Beamish
The Four Musketeers?' a.k.a.. Derek Beamish, Peter Napthine, Richard Smith & Jon Warnes
Every two or three years we normally make the weekend trip up to Scotland to see its wonderful birds and admire its spectacular scenery, but in March 2004 year for a change we decided to visit the Foret of Compiegne in France to look for Black Woodpeckers.
Our thanks to Perry Haines from Kent, your directions posted on the web were spot on.
We hired a car for the weekend (£140), booked a P&O ferry (£86) for the early hours of Saturday morning and pre-booked two rooms in an hotel in Compiegne for Saturday night - it was a budget Etap hotel found on the internet which cost € 37.00 for a double room, which sleeps up to three with four Euros for breakfast, well worth it.
We arrived in Calais at about 01:30 on Saturday morning and drove the one hundred and forty eight miles to Compiegne which took about two and a quarter hours, the toll for taking the A1 was € 13.10 each way.
It is worth getting into the forest at first light as we had the first Black Woodpecker in flight by 06:15 and had good views of a Middle Spotted by 06:45. The area just past the Hamadryades cross roads is ideal for woodpeckers, with mature tall trees consisting mainly of oak and beech, perfect for them. We had a least five Black Woodpeckers in this area. After 08:00 the Black Woodpeckers had just about all stopped drumming and calling and we had only one more brief sighting and heard only the odd call.
A view along one of the forest tracks.
Great Spotted Woodpeckers and Nuthatches were common, the odd Green Woodpecker was heard calling - we only saw one and that was outside the forest - Crested Tit has to be looked for but we had up to four each day but Marsh Tits were everywhere. We had a Grey-headed woodpecker calling, but we did not manage to see it.
We visited the forest again on Sunday morning for an hour and a half, not getting there till about 07:30 - we had paid for the breakfast so we were going to eat it! (we would expect nothing less - editors) - we only saw two Black Woodpeckers in flight but did see a pair of Middle Spotted and three Short toed Treecreepers. Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers, as here in Suffolk, proved to be elusive.
We had a total of fifty six species in or around the forest and sixteen seabirds on the ferry trip home.
Another bonus to the trip was the delicious French meal we had in the restaurant Bistrot du Boucher, definitely another place well worth a visit.
Our trip was on the 5th and 6th March 2004 and early March seems to be an ideal time as all the woodpeckers were active, drumming and calling except the Middle Spotted, which lived up to its reputation as noted in the Handbook of the Birds of the Western Palearctic of being silent for most of the time.
Species List: In or around the forest
| Great
Crested Grebe Cormorant Grey Heron Mute Swan Greylag Canada Goose Mallard Pochard Buzzard Kestrel Hen Harrier Sparrowhawk Moorhen Coot Lapwing Snipe Black Headed Gull Common Gull |
Herring
Gull Stock Dove Wood Pigeon Feral Pigeon Collared Dove Black Woodpecker Great Spotted Woodpecker Middle Spotted Woodpecker Skylark Meadow Pipit Robin Blackbird Redwing Mistle Thrush Goldcrest Long-tailed Tit Crested Tit Marsh Tit |
Blue
Tit Great Tit Nuthatch Wren Treecreeper Short-toed Treecreeper Jay Magpie Rook Carrion Crow Starling House Sparrow Brambling Chaffinch Greenfinch Goldfinch Siskin Yellowhammer |
Ferry trip - home
|
Red-throated
Diver |