Bygone birding: a case of second time lucky for British birder on Lake Geneva jaunt in search of Wallcreeper

                               

The Wallcreeper - a species every birder wants to see 

R.S.R. Fitter was a frontline ornithologist of the 1950s and 1960s.  Below is what he wrote  in his column, In The Country, which appeared the December 4, 1964 edition of the Birmingham Daily Post.

There are certain colourful and attractive birds that every birdwatcher hopes to see before he dies. 

High on the list are the Golden Oriole, the Hoopoe, the Bee-eater and the Wallcreeper. 

The first three are not too hard to see - the Oriole and the Hoopoe almost anywhere on the Continent, the Bee-eater if you go to the right parts of Spain or Southern France. 

But the Wallcreeper had always eluded me. 

Last January, while on a short business trip to Morges, at the west end of the Lake of Geneva, I travelled the whole length of the lake, to Villeneuve at the east end - and a very pleasant rail trip it was along the lake shore - to try to see a Wallcreeper that was reputed to frequent the old town hall there during winter. 

The town hall was easy enough to find -it is right by the station - but the only bird on it was a Treecreeper, more likely the Continental Short-toed Treecreeper. 

So I was delighted to learn, on a return visit to Morges, at the end of last month, that Wallcreepers had been seen only a few days previously on a range of Jura cliffs at Vallorbe, not far away. 

This time I was more fortunate.

Although the bird was too high up the cliff to see the red patches on its wings, I had a clear view of the unmistakable round-winged outline of a Wallcreeper fluttering about among the numerous crannies of a tall limestone crag only a few hundred yards from Vallorbe Station. 

* Photo by Imran Shah from Islamabad via Wikimedia Commons