France in Focus

Just seen a hoopoe outside our house.
Seems a bit earlier than usual.

Last Monday I opened the shutters and heard my first cuckoo. I immediately thought the hoopoes will be along soon and sure enough I saw two at the end of last week and one early this week. No calling yet.

I love their courting call ............... for the first day! But our long roof appears to be a favourite position for them and they do go on and on and on.

You're lucky - we haven't heard a thing yet. We used to hear the cuckoos and hoopoes competing when we lived in 49 - cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo, cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo ......

No sign of any hoopoes here yet but I’m pleased to hear that the little Owl family are back under my roof. They move somewhere else during the summer and I was afraid that they weren’t returning this year as for some reason they were much later than usual.

How pretty they are. We heard all kinds of birds while out working in the garden yesterday. I have no idea what types of birds they were/are, but one sounded like a cuckoo, another definitely a woodpecker pecking away.

Saw our first hoopoe here this morning having heard one a week ago.
They are two weeks earlier than last year.

I'm flabbergasted!

After posting above, I left the house to get the car at about 11 am. As I opened the front door I heard the first whoop whoop - I thought "Typical". We got back just before 2 pm and heard a strange tapping in the salon at the back of the house; and yet the five dogs were calm and ignoring it. When we investigated there was a Hoopoe holding onto french doors and tapping on the window. This continued, on and off, until 8 pm ish. We thought it was after insects between the wood and glass. Later we began to were worry that it may have a mental problem but we did see it sitting on the ridge of one of our low roofs and it was being very alert and scanning all around it.

This morning, I had the dogs out and Mrs LG fed the birds as usual at the back of the house. Hoop-de-doop was on the grass as you would expect and flew up to the roof - giving a sort of cackling noise to her. It began to whoop so we do know he's a boy. BUT, from 8.30 0nwards he had been tapping at the three windows we have at the back of the house (he's doing it on the french doors again as I write. Earlier, he was sitting on the windowsill of the new bedroom watching my wife painting the ceiling and tapping from time to time. His tapping is quite loud.

He does not seem bothered if we go to the window (unbelievably, the dogs pay no attention to him) and if you say anything to him he puts his crest up and appears to take notice.


IMG_20230330_134145.jpg

Sorry, I have no idea of how to put pictures on here from the phone used to take shots of the hoopoe.

https://www.franceinfocus.com/download/ ... a382171325

Try again!

Well done, I've not tried to upload directly off of my phone, but you've managed it.

I always smile when I see them because they look like they belong back in the stone age to me.