Thanks Sue - that is a very interesting site! I shall try to get a better look at the chaps tomorrow and see if I can get further (corrected from fuhrer…sigh…) with identifying them. They were certainly very smart-looking !
Didn’t realize they were from Germany 
Oops… 
… corrected…
It just looked different, mostly because its beak is not sparrow-like, but much finer. The top of its head is grey, and the grey continues under its chin. And its coloring is more vivid and complex than a sparrow. I looked for it on oiseaux.net and hey presto!
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I’ve probably been looking at them for ages, thinking they were sparrows 
Of course failing eyesight doesn’t help with spotting differences either. The big white birds I saw could have been anything - I only knew they weren’t swans 
If they were startlingly white and tall and slim with long legs and a long neck, almost certainly they were great white egrets. There are smaller versions as well. Interestingly you say “they”. The smaller egrets are almost always “they”. The large egrets quite often are solitary.
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That’s very interesting Sue, thank you! I’ve seen a solitary one in the field next to ours but just up the road there was definitely quite a collection of them!
I’ve posted a photo of our hawk back in January. Well, now, it’s either him attacking our little birds, or another darker hawk who we haven’t been able to catch in a photo as yet. I’m looking for a way of feeding the birds while protecting them as far as possible from this predator. The food is pretty sheltered by bushes but not entirely, and the hawk is very agile. I’ve found a balloon with eyes on…
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It will be interesting to see if that works, Fleur!
I’ve always wondered whether those plastic herons you see for sale for putting next to your pond actually deter the real thing 
hi all,really enjoying the posts and photos,hoping to see similar when we eventually get over ,has anybody had pine martins visiting their feeding stations I understand they are quite common in rural france
We have stone martens up here in Normandie - reasonably close relations to pine martens and cute looking but tend to live in attics and are very destructive! Wrong countryside here for pine martens but other areas may be luckier…
My neighbour swears by hers! She put one in her pond after a heron raided her fish, never been a problem since.
I just lost my cat after a fight with a Beech Martin recently so not exactly my favourite animal at the moment, cute looking, vicious and according to my vet carry quite a lot of viruses that cause bad infections in dogs and cats.
Had them visiting my chickens 
Me too a few years ago, a complete massacre.
appologies for mentioning them now and bringing past memories to light 
ive always been fascinated by them since keeping polecats,nature is beautiful but also cruel
fantastic 
No bad memories per se, I knew there were martens near the village, and after the massacre, the locally approved trapper came around to confirm the diagnosis and set a few traps, but no luck catching anything except the cockerel, who was suave enough to avoid being killed by the marten, but no clever enough to get himself caught in the trap
I find them incredibly beautiful creatures, we have some martens in the nearby pine wood in our new house and they occasionally come into the garden.
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I put traps, those big cage type ones, in my garden to see who had been up to no good and all I caught were my cats, several times 
I have foxes badgers deer etc who aren’t too bothered by me but are obviously much cleverer than the cats.
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