November
November 2019 saw the arrival of a Pine Bunting here, three days after one turned up in a regular spot for the species in Switzerland. Unlike last year though, there were no sudden snow storms (which had preceded the PB’s appearance in the garden), just day after day of sunny weather with light overnight frosts. I remained optimistic for an exotic bunting of some sort though as the numbers of
Yellowhammer feeding around the house grew and grew, peaking at c80 on 24th. The second lockdown had come into force, restricting me to outings of a maximum one hour and no further than 1km from home, but as I’m in the over 65s camp I was not unhappy about this, though feeling guilty at living in such a nature-filled place. I think I would have gone stir crazy if we were still living on the Swiss/France border as we were on returning from Lebanon in 2006 as there are no wild places within 1km of the flat we inhabited then!
Although our adult male had long since departed, single
Black Redstart turned up on 4th and 15th on next door’s roof but the only other ‘summer stragglers’ seen were occasional
Water Pipit still heading down from the mountains to their lowland winter quarters. Resident raptor activity continued with the
Golden Eagle pair displaying and hunting together and occasionally wandering down from their territory to fly over the house, as did a young male
Goshawk on three occasions. It was in a playful mood one day and decided to follow a young
Common Buzzard, occasionally diving at it, the Buzzard seemed to enjoy the game and then started trying to pursue the Gos. Strangely I had hardly any
Sparrowhawk sightings despite the good numbers of passerines around the feeders, a typical day watching around the house yielded between 25 and 30 species, I put my sightings on eBird if anyone is interested, the bar chart here gives you a good idea of what my little corner of the Alps can produce over a year (Hotspot Crêt de Lachat Manigod):
https://ebird.org/barchart?byr=1900&eyr=2020&bmo=1&emo=12&r=L8567686&personal=true . Perhaps the presence of the energetic Goshawk persuaded the Sparrowhawks to keep their heads down. A 1st year male
Peregrine on 18th was a nice surprise being my first November record here.
The fine weather was the likely reason for the total lack of winter thrush sightings and a
Song Thrush on 1st was a bit late (they are a summer visitor here), finch numbers fluctuated, suggesting some arrivals, especially on 18th when at least
1500 Brambling flew out of the valley in a ten minute period as the sun began to go down, a magnificent spectacle, it was also a treat to get morning visits by Hawfinch to the feeder outside the kitchen window. The two main highlights for November were appearances by both
Middle Spotted and Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, only the third ever MSW, the Lesser Spotted almost as rare up here but a pattern of single birds wintering seems to be establishing itself. Both species don’t breed at our altitude normally, though like the Short-toed Treecreeper from last spring the warming climate seems to be prompting a slow expansion to higher areas. So that meant I saw five species of woodpecker in the same month and six for the year when I add the Wryneck (Three-toed is present in very small numbers in Haute-Savoie but
Wilson’s Petrel is probably more likely here than that one!). To celebrate the relaxation of lockdown outdoor exercise limits from one hour/one km to 3hours/20kms we took my Mother in Law up to the Plateau de Beauregard on the last day of the month for a walk in the sunshine, looking down on the ‘sea’ of cloud which had us in a gloomy fog for two days, a good choice as we found at least six
Fieldfare with a single
Redwing, feeding on the still snow-free pasture, the Redwing was my first one anywhere in 2020, bringing my species total for the year to a paltry 150 (still it’s quality not quantity that counts I always say
). Photos of over the house flybys of the local Golden Eagle and young Goshawk plus the view from above the clouds.
