26th November 1988

At about 8.30 this morning the water was still higher than last night but going down. In fact it did not disappear back into the channels until about midday.
The first bird we saw was a kingfisher which landed on the nearest reserve sign, but realised there were humans too close for comfort and zoomed off to perch on the next reserve sign instead. Birds were generally as yesterday with the addi­tion of about a dozen ringed plovers feeding with a small group of dunlin.
When the tide was low enough to allow it, we walked behind a row of houses along the shore line. We soon came to face a small islet with thirty of so brent geese preening or roosting on its shore. Through the telescope we studied their plumages carefully. In most species of geese the adults have pale fringes to the wing coverts and mantle feathers while in first winter birds the fringes are narrower and browner. Brents, how­ever, are exceptional in that the adult lacks the pale fringes, yet the young bird does have them and so appears to have mottled upper-parts and barred wings. The bird undergoes a partial body moult during the winter, gaining the white collar of the adults, then losing the mottling on the mantle and finally, in the following spring and summer, los­ing the barring on the wings.
One particular goose caught our attention as it was very dark on the upper-parts and belly but had pale striped flanks, its collar was more pro­nounced than that of any other bird there. We did a sketch and took detailed notes, and later con­sultation with the books confirmed our suspicions that the strange bird was a black brant, probably an eastern Siberian bird as it was with dark-bellied brents, rather than a western Canadian bird that would more likely be found with pale-bellied brents.
As the tide receded small groups of brent were leaving the area, and eventually the group on the islet left too, except for one bird with a damaged wing. Beyond the islet we could see about a dozen black‑necked grebes. A couple of harriers were hunting over a bigger offshore island. Sev­eral of the islands are also nature reserves, managed by the Societe d'etude et de la protection de la nature en Bretagne, one of the oldest natur­alist societies in France.
It was quite cold and we were heading back along the road to the van for a hot drink when a car stopped and the driver asked if we were Eng­lish and could he help us, meaning could he tell us some places for observation. He introduced himself as Sylvain, and talked, in fairly good English, about the area and its birds, and invited us to his house for a cup of coffee in the after­noon.
One of the places Sylvain mentioned was a very marshy area where there were a number of reed bunt­ings, flicking their wings and tails as they perched on bushes and overhead cables, perhaps in agitation at our presence. A little egret fished in a pond, stirring up water and mud with its foot and grabbing at anything that tried to escape. Sylvain told us this species had been wintering here in increasing numbers for about fifteen years. In a drier area there were fifty or so goldfinches disturbed from their lunch and twit­tering in the treetops.
After lunch we took up the coffee invit­ation. Sylvain's garden backed down onto the shore and he took us to the shelter of some Corsican pines he had planted fifteen years ago. He was going to cut them down because they obscured the view from the house and did not provide the expected shelter from the wind. Had the tide not been right out we would have benefited from being able to get close to birds unseen by them. Hundreds of pintail and a few other wildfowl were still out there, and the number of black-necked grebes in the deep channel had risen to thirty.
A marsh harrier flew the length of an offshore island two or three times then flew low across the water and circled a few times, scat­ter­­ing great black‑back gulls and other birds. It got nearer to the water, legs dangling, and hovered for a few seconds. It repeated the circl­ing and hovering and may have touched the water with its talons but it did not pick anything up. After­wards it gained height and flew off into the haze. Marsh harriers have occa­sionally been recorded taking items from the water surface.
There was a log fire burning in the house and the coffee was most welcome, even if rather strong for our tastes. Sylvain talked about his visits to Britain ‑ he was a school teacher and took students with him; he told us more about the G­olfe, and explained the workings of his local hunting associ­ation. He was very much aware of the reputation that French hunters had, and believed that things were changing, but slowly.
Hunting Associations were legally obliged to set aside reserves where birds could take refuge from the shooters. The birds, he said, were not stupid and soon took to using the reserve and non‑hunting areas all the time ‑ last year the only bird he had shot was a pigeon!
The members of the Hunting Association were each allocated a certain section of their com­mune's hunting area on each hunting day on a rota system; anyone caught in the wrong section would be fined. Outsiders were not allowed to hunt in this area under any circumstances; a group of people who had tried hunting on the reserve and had had their car, boat, guns, duck etc confis­cated, and were fined F8000 each. The Association regul­ated its own hunting, for example, there was cur­rently a three year ban on hare hunting because numbers had declined. And local land­owners could state whether hunting was permitted on their land, either for themselves privately or for the hunting association, or whether it was forbidden to every­one.
One could easily get the impression that French hunters were not as bad as we are some­times led to believe, but Sylvain did point out that hunting is seen differently in different areas and the rules are not the same everywhere.