Paris isn't great for birding

I really enjoyed going to france last weekend, and was very lucky with the weather. Orleans is a really nice town too, and Paris was a bit awesome in the sunshine, and with all of the patisseries... Still, it's a good job I went there to visit friends and see the city rather than birdwatch. France has no birds.

Well that's not entirely true, there are plenty of these...


And a smattering of these guys...


I was excited to see that Hannah's house is opposite a really nice big pond in the middle of loads of farmland, with a huge forest at the end of the road, so I was hopeful of getting a count of at least 20 without having to try too hard, I mean it's not that ambitious.


Nice pond. Only has mallards on it though, with not even a mallard as supporting cast. Intruigingly though, shitloads of mistletoe EVERYWHERE. The hedges were full of sparrows, but no other passerines anywhere. I saw a pheasant and a GREY PARTRIDGE driving around on the way to Orleans one day, so that puts my count up to 6 so far, but then I'm starting to struggle. Magpie, common gull, heard a peacock bizarrely... 9 species.


Didn't matter though, because there was plenty of other stuff to look at, and the sparrows everywhere more than made up for the lack of variety.


Bonjour je suis un sparrow. J'habite dans notre dame, c'est tres chic, non?
Then WAIT. What is that one in the top row, second from the left?


No grey on the head and instead rich brown, with dark cheeks..... TREE SPARROW???
Awesome if it is... see what you think

Anyway, in other news I saw my first ever hare, which ran out infront of our car on the way from the Eurostar to Hannah's house on Thursday. There are also loads of wild boar and deer living in the forest outside of the village, but I didn't have much finding them. Pretty exciting though :) Must go back and investigate further one day...