Saturday 27 October 2018

Réserve Naturelle de la Truchère- Ratenelle

La Truchère - the lake
Our photo club in Cluny came with a proposal to organise an outing to La Truchère. La Truchère? Yes, La Truchère. We had no idea what on earth was interesting about this village, so we decided to look it up in Wikipedia and Google Maps. La Truchère appeared to be a small village on the East bank of the Saône near Tournus, there where another (small) river, the Seile flows into the Saône.

La Truchère -swan
The only other things La Truchère has on offer are a church built in 1830 and a tiny little mooring place for small pleasure boats, neither of them very photogenic. We had no idea why the club had chosen this place for an outing.
Upon inquiry we were told that, smack in the middle between two villages, there was a Nature reserve called Réserve Nature de La Truchère-Ratenelle, where one part with sand dunes, marshland and peat district is in la Truchère, the other, with a lake, marshland and peat district, is in Ratenelle.

La Truchère -swan
The area is known to be home to some interesting birds, among others the purple heron.
We should have known better, and not go to this bird reserve completely unprepared. We have not the foggiest when birds are breeding or when they migrate, etc., and apart from that we have not got a zoom lens sufficiently strong to shoot some nice pictures.

La Truchère -swan
The chances that we would return with some spectacular bird pictures was in any case nil. An extra drawback was, that due to the extremely long and dry summer the water table was also extremely low. This of course did not add to the picturesqueness of the place.
Irrespective of this I managed to shoot some acceptable pictures, albeit not of exotic birds, but of everyday swans, and who knows, maybe we will have more luck next time….

La Truchère -swan

No comments:

Post a Comment