Week in France in Lot region 13th June - peregrine and frogs

I kept a diary to put in my blog when I came home but of course didn't do it straight away - so here it is. This also means that other entries are now delayed but will try to catch up...

Saturday 13th June: Peregrine in Limoge and the landscape near Rocamadour

I am sitting outside our gate at 9.45. It is still quite light though starting to get dark now the sun has set. It’s been very hot – 100 degrees was predicted – not sure if it reached that but may well have done. We stayed at Limoge last night, having taken the train there. The day got off to a great start. I left our hotel for a short walk around 7.50 this morning and headed for the station which has a tall tower (cupola? I guess). The swifts were circling nearby so I looked through the binoculars to see if I could see where they are nesting and spotted a young peregrine on the ledge. It looked a bit scruffy and as I watched walked round the ledge (very carefully) so I cou ld see its yellow feet. There were no more birds, so I think it was the last from the nest. The photo shows the tower - but not the bird as on that day the camera was not working :-(

I, and then Jim too, watched it on and off till about 11.15 by which point we had sorted out our hire car and were moving luggage. I wondered whether parents would come to feed it, but remember the warden telling us when we went to see the sea-eagles in Mull that when the chicks are ready to fly the parents stop feeding them – to urge them out. I wonder if it is the same thing here?
I looked often but did not see any adults return – but did get wonderful close views by standing on the crossing near the station. But the camera was not working! (It turned out the batteries needed changing…..). Alas, when we looked at around 11.45 after half an hour’s gap, the bird had gone. Odd to think that one moment it was there, then no sign at all! No bird hanging around nearby – or flying nearby. So we were really lucky to see it.

After an early lunch we drove down to the house we’ve rented near Rocamadour - in the Lot region. On the way we saw a dark kite fly over as we drove. Although it was brown rather than black these are apparently black kites.

I have never been before but after a few hours can see why it is a popular place with the British. We’re staying in a house near a hotel – outside the village on the side of a valley which is teeming with birdsong and crickets singing. Just at the bottom of the valley is a small pond, surrounded by marsh and full of frogs calling – which I’m pretty sure are marsh frogs; of which there is now a small colony in Romney marshes in the UK. These are large frogs – up to 7 inches or so and not terribly attractive – and their colonisation of part of the UK is a it worrying as they are quite aggressive – out compete our European frog, I think, where they move in. Their calls are lovely though – and the first time I heard them I thought they were birds.

We walked up the lane around 8.45 and saw several jays and heard a couple of cuckoos calling. At the to of the rise on the other side of the small valley, the trees get quite dense and are mainly oak (scrub oak?) but interspersed with rocky clearings with orchids, wild thyme and sheep. Now at 10pm there is still some light and I just heard the cuckoo again. Most of the birds are silent now but a few birds are calling, though the sounds are mainly crickets (or similar) and the frogs.

I’m wondering whether there might be owls here. There is a new sound I can’t identify, a kind of ooo – eee with the eee higher. And it seems to me the kind of landscape where there could be nightjars.