En Partant de Bretagne

   The title means, "Leaving Bretagne".

   After a continental breakfast without the French folk songs from the night before, we drove down the coast to a little seaside park. We walked down a dirt path along side the ocean. The name of the park is "Chemin des Douaniers", which means "the way of the customs officials". This name is very French because it has nothing to do with a path through the gorse.

   As we searched the seaweed covered rocks below, we noticed a Goosander (Mergus Merganser) sitting quietly on what appeared to be a nest. We continued on down the path and saw some of the usual birds that we have seen everyday since being in France. Birds jump out and flitter away. They move quickly. They do not let you look at them. They flit and change direction, and flit again.

   At a copse of European conifer trees, we looked up and listened. We need several French woodpeckers while we are here in France. One way to detect woodpeckers is just to listen. Suddenly, a large bird about the size of the American Crow (Corvus Brachyrhynchos) took off from a branch. This bird was a large Eurasian Jay (Garrulus Glandarius) close to us. This Jay is soft brown with blue wing bars. We had never seen this bird before.

   After pulling away from the park, we drove through Bretagne. We noted that the road signs started to be written in Breton as well as French. Breton is a version of the Celtic language. The Celtic people are the Gaels, the Gauls, the Britons, the Irish and the Gallations of today. Berry and I thought Bretagne was more spread out than La Manche, where we had been.

   While on the road, we saw a large Hen Harrier (Circus Cyaneus). The Hen Harrier is a bird of prey. It is a typical harrier, which hunts close to the field, hugging the contours of the land below it. Hen Harriers hunt primarily small mammals, hens and large insects.

   As we were birding the rural roads of Bretagne, we bumped into a small village named "Mississippi". Berry took this picture of the sign as we were leaving the village. The red diagonal line means "you are leaving...".

   We arrived in the city of Vannes about 2:15pm. It seems that most restaurants stop serving lunch at 2:00pm. We went to four places before finding a lovely creperie that was open. The food was great. Robert had a galette with a salad on it and Berry had a galette with potatoes and mushrooms. She gave me some of her mushrooms. Both of us had a crepe for desert. His was strawberry preserves. Hers was lemon. Yum.

   After lunch we left Bretagne and voyaged around the corner of Nantes. We wanted to avoid Nantes' metropolitan jumble by jumping inland to the smallish city of Niort, where we got a hotel room. From our hotel room, we saw more than twenty Common Swifts (Apus Apus). They were swooping and diving above the buildings, in order to consume insects in the air just above the buildings.

   Dinner was at the very nice Les Relais d'Alsace. Robert had an assortment of German sausages and a salad. Berry had Rigatoni with chorizo sausage. It is impossible to get coffee to go in France. Unless you steal the cup and run out of the restaurant. We both miss Starbucks.

Robert and Berry

Photos courtesy of wikipedia and bfowler