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Les Grues Cendrée


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I hope they have a safe journey in this terrible weather rivers are full here - so much rain last night and all through today - great thunderstorms last night. I just don't remember them returning this early last year.
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If you want to see some Grues at the moment, the Aube area, north of Lac du Temple has several hundred.  If you drive from Brienne to Piney I usually see one or two fields totally packed with them.  Sadly, they're eating all the maize crops that were planted in October!  One of my friends has written off one of his fields and will replant once these 'pests' have gone. 

I personally love watching them, witht their frilly black skirts and their red outline on their eyes.  Every winter we have seen thousands of them here.  Not sure whether they know they should be on their way further south. 

Margaret

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can't believe it , but the cranes are already heading north and we've got snow! .Saw over a hundred flying over our place (36160) yesterday around 4.pm .We did have more than ever heading south during the autumn ,hopefully the flu wont make much of a dent in their numbers.Anyone else hand a sighting?
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We had several hundred overhead yesterday - two groups, one coming from

the south west and one from the south which joined forces and headed

north.  We are in the north west corner of Hautes Pyrenees, not

far south of Aire sur l'Adour.  It really is a magnificent sight

and the noise is amazing.

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Seena couple of waves going over - I think if you view from the correct angle they look like flying ascii art fluxing around with crazy kerning and elastic leading making moving cartoons... they always seem to do a snoopy and various faces...
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  • 9 months later...
The Cranes nest in Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Germany and to some extent Russia.

As the Cranes prepare to migrate they start to gather at various places, the Swedish island of Öland and the south coast of the Baltic Sea on the island of Rügen are important sites for this, then toward the end of October about half the birds start to move over a period of a few days, flying south west towards Champagne Ardenne in north east France, where there are a number of large lakes, Lac du Der being particularly important. The remainder of the birds will, depending on weather conditions, follow in December. Some of these Cranes will stay at the lakes in north east France for the winter, hundreds of thousands more will continue to fly south west across France in November to over winter in Spain, Portugal, Morocco and south west France, in France this is principally Aquitaine / Gascoigne.

The exact dates / times vary with climatic conditions, this year they have been "running late" due to the milder weather across Europe, they can start to return to the breeding grounds from as early as the beginning of March.

 

I don't know about the nests you are talking about in Poitiers, Gary, what do they look like?

 

Chris

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Ah, I see, Gary. That, I'm pleased to say, is one of the sucess stories of the last 30 years when this bird was on the edge of disappearing in the region, or the Country for that matter. Numbers are now "reasonable" with continuing recovery, protection from being hunted has helped and also with projects like the one in the photo.

[IMG]http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q73/unautremonde/White-Stork.jpg[/IMG]

Chris

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