An American birder in France - Part 2, birding in Paris

Hi everyone and welcome back to the channel. I'm standing at a train station in a little town called Étampes, south of Paris, and I'm about to catch a train into Paris, and I am going to do some Paris, France birding today. I'm going to be going to some of the parks in downtown Paris, walking along the Seine River a little bit, looking for European birds. So this is going to be an American guy having an adventure in a European city and trying to pick up some new birds for the channel from Europe. If things are going according to plan, this should be my second video from my business trip to France here. So the first one is going to be the birds that I've seen in this town about an hour south of Paris, where I'm based here for my business trip, and I've already seen some good birds there. So probably that video is already out, and the plan is to have this one just be this trip to Paris, where I go in for the day, walk around the parks, and see what we can see. So I don't know if we're going to see a lot of super exciting birds, from a European perspective at least, but we should have some nice scenery and have a few backgrounds of things in Paris. That's kind of the plan. Looks like a beautiful day today. So my train should arrive in about five minutes here, so I'm going to come back when I have arrived at the first location that I'm going to bird in Paris. So stick with me, and we'll see if we can have some fun today. Okay, I've just arrived at my first location, which is called the Jardin des Plantes in downtown Paris. That just means Garden of the Plants, and it looks like kind of a neat place. There's all sorts of different gardens and buildings, and it's a neat, neat urban location with a lot of plants. And as soon as I walked in, the very first thing I saw was a rose-ringed parakeet teed up on a tree. So I scrambled around to get my camera out and everything, and got that. So I'd say we're off to a good start here for our Paris urban birding. So I started out by birding the formal gardens at the Jardin des Plantes, and I quickly realized that this was a really nice spot to get close-up views of some of the more common European birds. This place gets a lot of people coming through, obviously, and the birds just seem a little bit less wary here. This handsome Eurasian blackbird was a nice bird to see. This is actually a pretty close relative of the American robin, one of the most familiar birds in North America. Another bird I was really happy to run into close up was this beautiful great tit. Another common European bird, and I've been seeing them regularly for the past few days, but this is the first time I got kind of an extended look at one, so very happy to get this view here. So it turns out that the rose-ringed parakeets are both common and very conspicuous in the Jardin des Plantes. They make a lot of noise flying around. They're not shy at all. Here, obviously, I was able to get quite close to this one that's just sort of gorging itself on these seeds, and you can see people walking by in the background. They're also walking by quite close. So I thought this was really great, really enjoyed this extended view here. Carian crows are one of the most common birds in Europe, actually, and can be a little tricky to get close to them, but once again, it was nice to see this fellow just sort of walking around, enjoying the flowers. Definitely the best extended view I've gotten so far on my trip. As you can see, this one has bands on both of its legs, and I'm not sure why such a common and widespread bird would be banded. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know in the comments. Common wood pigeons are a large pigeon that is really conspicuous in all the parks and green areas in Europe. It's hard to go to any park without seeing a few wood pigeons flying around. So this bird here was one of my target species for jardine dust plants, the stock dove. This is actually a lifer for yours truly. This is my third lifer of this trip to France, and so I was obviously pretty happy to get a good view of these guys. The blue tit is another really good-looking little bird. In terms of its shape and its activity, it really reminds me very much of the black-capped chickadees, which are so common in my own area back home. This one's obviously a much more colorful bird, really beautiful little bird. And now for something completely different, as the Monty Python sketch goes. So there's actually a small zoo here at jardine dust plants, and that would explain this little troop of wallabies just hanging out on the lawn. So this garden also has some natural areas that are fenced off, so that you can't actually go in them, but you can sort of peer into them with your binoculars from the outside. And that's how I was able to get these photos of this handsome Eurasian jay. All right, I've been here at the jardine dust plants for about an hour and a half, for two hours or so. It's late morning now. Really nice place. There are a lot of birds around. You know, not incredible diversity. I think I've only seen 12 or 13 species, but had the opportunity to video some, as you've probably seen already. Could stay here longer for sure, but I think I'm going to move on, try to see some other things. So I'm going to take a walk over to the river, walk along the river a little bit, and sightsee and see if I can see some birds there. And I think I'm going to work my way towards another garden that's not far away called the Luxembourg Gardens, just to see if there's anything there that might be different from what I've had here. But this has been great. I do have one lifer today, which is cool. That is a stock dove. Not the most exciting lifer in the world. They do look like pigeons, but they're more wild and shy, and they're up in the trees. So I did get those today. And I think for me, the absolute highlight just has to be these rose-ringed parakeets that are so tame. They're just coming and eating on the plants and perched up right next to people. And, you know, I just love seeing these kind of exotic birds like that. Obviously they're an introduced species, but they're very well established in Europe. Okay, so we'll move on and I'll come back when I get to the river and we'll see some of that. So as I said, I walked from the Jardin des Plantes to the river, to the Seine River and walked along there and did pick up a few more new birds for the trip there. I had some mute swans, which is of course an introduced species in the Boston area and New England and quite common there. But nice to see them here on their home turf. And also a great cormorant, which is native to both Europe and America. That's the one they just call a cormorant over here, I believe. And it's kind of funny to see that one because in my last video from my home patch back in the Boston area, I was all excited at the great cormorant that I got on my home patch and then I come to France and get one here too. But I got a nice view of that one teed up on a post over the river. Then didn't see too much more as I walked along towards the Notre Dame Cathedral. Then I came across a flock of black-headed gulls. Obviously they don't have black heads. They're in their non-breeding plumage. It's a small gull. It's related to the Bonaparte's gull that we have in North America. I find it to be generally the most common gull that you come across in Europe when you're birding near cities and things like that. This is the Notre Dame Cathedral, which sits on a little island in the middle of the Seine River. As you probably know, this cathedral was badly damaged by fire back in 2019. But they are actively restoring it and I believe it's scheduled to reopen in another year or so. So after that, I then walked a ways farther towards the Luxembourg Gardens. At this point, I found Paris to be getting extremely crowded. Started to be a little less enjoyable, to be honest. The Luxembourg Gardens were beautiful, but very crowded and not really bird-friendly. I think the Jardin des Plantes was much better for birding. Just in case you're visiting the area and want to make one stop, that would be the one to go to. Did have a few more birds there. I got a nice black-headed gull perched up on a statue, which was kind of fun. But at that point, I had been walking a lot, birding a lot, and I just kind of made my way back. I had a long walk back to the train station. Okay, so as we're getting towards the end of this video here, I just want to include a few more birds that I was able to photograph in the days after my trip to downtown Paris. Still from the Paris area, just a little bit north of downtown. And of course, everybody who goes on a birding trip needs to pad their list a little bit by getting rock pigeon in there somewhere. Okay, hi again everyone. I am back in Etampes. I took the train back from Paris now. It's late afternoon. I had a full day in Paris, did a lot of walking. It was a fun day to do some urban birding in Europe, and I know I added some new species. I did have the one lifer, as I mentioned, the stock dove. So, I haven't added everything up. I don't know where we are. You'll see that on the video itself, of course. But thanks very much for watching this Paris birding adventure, and I'll see you in the next one.