Le Teich Ornithological Reserve (1)

For our last day, we had to choose between getting the train and visiting Bordeaux city, which is a heritage site and which I would still love to see, or spending the day at the nearby Le Teich Ornithological Reserve.  With C's knee still giving him trouble after the steep descents of Puy de Sancy, we thought the bird reservation would be the easier option. Perhaps it wasn't - we spent over four hours just walking around, but at least there were plenty of hides where we could sit down along the way.
I took a LOT of photos, so even though I have weeded them out considerably I think it's still going to take three posts. Feel free to skip or ignore them. For me, I think perhaps it was my favourite outing of our whole three weeks holiday; it was quiet, peaceful, tranquil. We would both love a chance to visit the reserve during migratory season, when it's meant to be full of all sorts of weird and wonderful birds. The one that we were likely to see and I was most disappointed that we didn't was the hoopoe. We saw plenty to make up for it, though...

First up to meet our eyes was a small stork colony. They are encouraged to nest by the provision of platforms with rudimentary nests to attract them, but are totally wild birds.

Wide open spaces and water. The reserve is part tidal saltmarsh, partly forested, and partly river

Stilt

Shelduck

Shelduck chcks, I'd never seen these before.

Egret at rest

A familiar sight in a different location!