Auprès de Verdun

   The title just means "Around Verdun".

   We woke very slowly and saw that it had stopped raining. We ate breakfast of cold cuts, cheese and yogurt, then tried to drive out of Luxembourg. The traffic was horrendous, red lights and round-abouts that it took us quite a bit to get to the French border. A long line of cars all leading to a choke point. Slow as Christmas. Once we were finally in France, the landscape quickly changed to beautiful rolling countryside and large fields of yellow flowers.

   We got off of the main highway as soon as we could and birded the narrow, rural roads where there is less auto traffic. We saw three Common Magpies (Pica Pica) dancing in a cemetery in northern France. It might surprise you that we bird cemeteries, but we are generally respectful. It was the Magpies who were dancing in the cemetery. The body of the Common Magpie is black and white with a very long green glossed tail. Below is a picture of a Common Magpie.

   We proceeded to the famous battlefields around Verdun. We saw German military cemeteries and American military cemeteries and several French monuments honoring the dead. The Foret de Verdun is a large forest near the battle fields. Here we observed the European Greenfinch (Carduelis Chloris) and the Common Chaffinch (Fringilla Coelebs) along with several Barn Swallows (Hirundo Rustica).

   Birding was better on the rural roads and even inside the tiny villages. This was the most pleasant part of our journey. The roads in France were made before the invention of the car. The roads are very small and in the towns, people drive very close to each other. In Verdun itself we finally exchanged american money for euros. We had wanted to get coffee and a croissant, but the quaint little place took no credit cards. We raced to Verdun to change money.

   We stopped what we were doing and had a lovely lunch in Verdun. The smaller the restaurant, we found that they speak almost no English. The meal was delightful and the cutest little old lady proprietor chided me for not eating all of the cheese on my plate. The chef had placed a pile of cubed soft white French cheese, delicious but there was a lot of it. She circled it slowly with her finger over my plate and frowned. We cracked up laughing. It was just outside of Verdun that we found the Yellowhammer (Emberiza Citrinella), a bright yellow bird with stripes on its body. Below, the Yellowhammer.

   In the afternoon, Berry and I headed to the Foret de L'Achalade. We saw the Common Kestral (Falco Tinnunculus) flying near the road. We were heading to Reims, France, when I turned down a cul-de-sac. We I turned around, we spotted a blue and yellow bird on a fence. It suddenly flew up to a wall and hung there so we could identify it. This was the Eurasian Blue Tit (Cyanoses Caeruleus). It was so pretty with yellow torso and blue wings.

   We made it to Reims, right at rush hour and experienced their traffic problem. Today was strangely framed by traffic problems. For dinner here Berry had the Salmon Risotto and Robert had Jambon de Reims ( ham with jelly ) and a confiture of roast duck and pate de fois gras with huge chunks of bread.

Robert and Berry

Photos courtesy of wikipedia