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Hauts-de-France Trip - Day 9 - France

Blogging at 19:00 on Thursday 4th January from N 48.64101°, W 02.02268° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:48.64101%2C-02.02268

Things to remember:
  • Another perfectly peaceful camp last night (pic). That made for a full house!
  • The area around where I'd camped was excellent for birds so I had a wander around at first light and thereafter - much to my genuine surprise - managed a run. It helped that most of it was on short-cropped (sheep-grazed) estuarine grassland.
  • Followed some map features (and my nose) and found an excellent birding spot at Le Pointe de Roche Torin. Saw the usuals plus hundreds of dark-bellied brent geese but the star of the show was a great skua. I was able to point this out to three French birders who were also there. Fair to say French birders are probably rarer than great skuas.
  • Arrived at St Malo mid-afternoon and did a bit more birding over the ferry-dock bay. More Brent geese, a great black-backed gull scoffing a huge dead eel and a small flock of turnstones were the best sightings.
  • As dark fell I also found myself amidst a sizeable starling murmuration: turns out they dropped into the port itself to roost. This would have been awesome but for the tons of starling shit now on the camper!
  • As now seems the norm, it's windy enough to take you off your feet here so I'm a bit nervous about the sailing...
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