Willow Warbler

Another bird I saw at BirdLife near La Sauge, Switzerland back in April. I've puzzled over this bird, originally thinking it was a Willow Warbler, then changed my mind to a Wood Warbler since that species is listed on one of the signs I photographed on the grounds. Upon looking at the pictures again and doing more research, I've decided to stick to my original decision. I base this on the paler yellow on the head and throat, browner rather than greenish back coloring and longer tail.

I first saw the bird reasonably close in among some branches along a trail. It then flew off, but I re-found it in a young tree in a relatively clear area. I heard it sing, but I am terrible at remembering bird songs. I find that a bit odd as I am good at remembering music melodies. I plan to eventually purchase a portable digital recording device that I can take into the field. That should help on some of these difficult ID situations.

Gray Heron

I watched this Gray Heron from one of the blinds at BirdLife in Switzerland. It was wading across the pond a fair distance away, then took to the air and landed about half as far from me from where it had started. Only a couple of moments went by when it pulled two large frogs out of the water.

It appears as if the smaller of the two frogs was holding onto to the larger with its front legs. When the Heron pulled the smaller from from the water, the larger came with. I suspect that the frogs were in the middle of mating.
The Heron fought with the two frogs for a bit, setting them down and holding them under water as they do with prey, until it ended up with just one frog.

As I remember (it's been over a month already), the Heron eventually flew off with the frog and I did not get to see it swallow it down.
The Grey Heron looks very similar to our Great Blue Heron. If you look closely you will see the the striping down the neck is less than the Great Blue and it lacks the rusty coloring on the leading edge of its wings.

Marsh Tit

Another bird from Switzerland. This was the first bird I took a picture of at BirdLife as I was walking to one of the blinds. It looks a lot like our Black-capped Chickadee and as one might suspect belongs to the same genus, Poecile.

In addition to posting sketches of birds in the bird blinds, there were also signs posted in various places. Check that bird out next to it on the sign. I would have loved to have seen that.
All-in-all a very nice place to bird.

Spotted Redshank

I never did post pictures of all the birds I took during my trip to Switzerland back in late April. Not all are good enough to post, but I still have some interesting ones.
While I was at the BirdLife facility, I spent a lot of time in the three excellent bird blinds they provided. Each blind could accommodate several people and the birding was reasonably good. The biggest problem I had was that the sun was not at an ideal angle. Not only did it cause harsh foreshadows, but the glare also seemed to mess with my camera's sensor as the pictures turned out somewhat soft.
None-the-less, these images of a Spotted Redshank turned out pretty well. I followed the shore bird as it worked its way around the pond, eventually ending up right below the blind.
The facility provided pictures and some information on the back wall of the blind of many of the frequent birds one might see. A fellow bird photographer pointed out this one for me.

I tried to take pictures of all the images of birds that I saw to help me determine their identity. Only trouble is that none of the text was in English. The Swiss speak three languages; German, French and Italian. I think there was a little of each sprinkled throughout the images. Luckily it turned out to be easy to decipher as all I had to do is do a Google search on the name. Inevitably, the scientific name would be included in the text and I could search on that to find out the English name for the bird. I guess those weird Latin scientific names are good for something and this may be the reason why they are used.

Eurasian Blackbird

I thought I was done with birding on Monday, but after taking the train back to Zurich on Wednesday evening in preparation for an early flight back to the states in the morning, I found myself in my hotel at about 5:30 PM. Looking out my window, I saw some European Magpies flying between trees near the hotel and across the street in a parking lot. I realized that I was in a residential neighborhood so I decided to head out and try my luck.

At first I ran into private streets and was a bit disappointed, but then I noticed a playground and thought I might find a park. Better than that, I found a trail that followed a stream which wound its way through a large part of the city.
Along the way was a beautiful cemetery. It seemed that every plot was planted with colorful flowers. It was in this cemetery that I found some Eurasian Blackbirds. They are indeed black, but they aren't blackbirds. They're actually thrushes and are in the same genus with American Robins.

The female in the bottom image was behaving very similarly to a Robin, hopping around in the grass and pulling worms from the soil.
The male in the upper two pictures was singing some of the most beautiful bird songs that I have heard. In fact, this wasn't the only time that I had heard them, but it was the first time I had gotten good looks at the birds.
After some research, I found that these birds are the basis of the poem "Sing a Song of Sixpence".

It's also the subject of one of the Beatles' hits "Blackbird".

Tufted Duck

So far, the birds I've posted from Switzerland were all from the late afternoon and early evening on the day that I arrived. I spent the next day, before beginning business meetings, across the lake, at a facility called Birdlife near La Sauge and the surrounding area.
Just outside the facility is a channel that connects Lac de Neuchatel with Murtensee, another nearby lake. This channel has many water fowl, including these Tufted Ducks. There have been sightings Tufted Ducks in Oregon this past Winter, but I was never lucky enough to get a chance to see one. Here in Switzerland they are much more common and I was able to get relatively close. They look a lot like a Lesser Scaup expect for the tuft on the back of their heads.

Mute Swan

The first thing I came upon when I reached the shore of Lac de Neuchatel for the first time were people feeding these Mute Swans. They slowly waddled up the sand to meet the people as they most likely do daily. What a change being able to see these large birds so close compared to the distant views I'm used to seeing of Tundra Swans around here.

The Swans where everywhere on the lake and they weren't very weary of people. They swam slowly and eloquently on the water striking gorgeous poses. Occasionally they would hold their wings slightly above their bodies as they swam as seen in the images above. Known as busking, it is evidently a threat display, mainly shown by males but also females to a small extent.

Eurasian Coot

There were many Coots swimming in Lac de Neuchatel, only these were Eurasian Coots, not American Coots. Even so, they bore a strong resemblance to our common rail. The main difference is the large white forehead. In addition to it being fully white (the American Coot has a red dot at the top of the forehead) it had the look of a flatten piece of play dough stuck to it forehead.

White Wagtail

I eventually learned that there are ferry boats that run from village to village along Lac de Neuchatel all day long. I road on one on my way back from birding on the far side of the lake on Monday before my meetings began.
I took a moment to take a picture of this ferry as I was photographing the White Wagtail below.

It came walking on the rocks along the shore of the lake. I had found a comfortable rock to sit on as I watched birds nearby. This helped make it less leery of me, along with the fact that normal foot traffic made it used to people.
I've found that birds tend to be tamer in areas where people are common and are likely to drop food. These same birds in more isolated areas are much more likely to be scared off by a human.
As its name suggests, it wags its tail often. Another handsome European bird!

Red-crested Pochard

It was strange to see so many new birds. I only saw four birds that I had seen before. Everything else was new. I imagine that it was this fact that made it seem that the birds were more colorful and had more beautiful songs. One of the more striking birds was the Red-crested Pochard seen below.

I saw this duck most everywhere I went. Though it is a member of the Family Anatidae, it shares no genus with any duck I've yet to see nor any duck in North America. While classified a diving duck, it apparently prefers to dabble.

Great Crested Grebe

The walk along the shore of Lac de Neuchatel was great. The community was celebrating the 1000th anniversary of the first found written reference of the lake, in addition it was Easter, a Sunday and a glorious day. There were many birds to be photographed including Mute Swans, Mallards, Eurasian Coots, Red-crested Pochards and these Great Crested Grebes.

I found them among boats that were docked at a mooring. As I was watching one swim about, I discovered another sitting on a nest. While the one stayed on the nest, the other would dive and surface with food which it shared with it's nesting mate. They were gorgeous birds!

European Greenfinch

I've been in Switzerland since Saturday on business. Luckily, I was able to squeeze in some birding as the weather was fabulous and the birds were in glorious song.

I flew into Zurich and then took a train for about two hours to a town named Neuchatel. It is located along Lac de Neuchatel, a huge fresh water lake. The image above is the view out my hotel balcony. This is looking across the narrow part of the lake, so you can get an feel for just how large the lake is.

I arrived around 2:00 PM on Sunday and decided I'd walk down to the lake to help me stay awake, since I had been up for about 21 hours, so I could adjust to the time difference. But before I did that, I noticed that there were a couple of small birds flying around in the tree you can see growing in the outdoor seating area just below my room.

When I got down there, I found a pair of finches. One was bright yellow and the other paler. The paler of the two spent most of its time fetching nesting material while the other, the male, just kinda hung out. :-)

It turns out these were European Greenfinches. Since they were accustomed to people, I was able to get some pretty close pictures although the female didn't sit still for very long.
I've identified just about every bird I saw during the trip and ended up seeing about 25 new life birds. I'm in Atlanta right now waiting for my flight to Portland and since I had a couple of hours I thought I'd get my first post from the trip out. I'll post more of the better pictures in the next few days.