Bird Song Hike

This time I'll take you along with word pictures... early Saturday morning it was dark, cold and raining, but I got up with the "early birds" and went on a hike with a few experts, who had books and binoculars, starting from this place:  http://www.gaststaette-henneberg.de/1.html at 6:00 am. (Scroll down to March, and you'll see the same Inn where we stopped to eat on our ski run.)  The rain let up, but it was still no weather for taking photos.  We saw the recent damage done by a wood harvester,  and the damage done years before by a tornado.  And then another clearing which had been a place for shooting practice used by the Russians even longer ago, and now there is heath and native black grouse.  One of the experts was a man with a white beard wearing a black cowboy hat, and he had traveled all over USA and Canada.  He could tell me the specific names in English for the trees and plants here, and explained the relationship of the birds that I knew from my homeland to the birds here in Germany.  He knew not only the birds, but many kinds of animal species... he's definitely more interested in nature than the tourist attractions in cities.  We heard the chickadee, woodpeckers, and many kinds of songbirds...  afterwards the owner of the Inn showed us his Avery where he had many beautiful native birds which we could observe close up.
Then we went inside where his wife had prepared a large breakfast:  first a stinging-nettle-sage soup, home-made sourdough bread, rolls, berry jam, herb butter, wild garlic butter, herb cottage cheese, herb sausages, lemon cake, and stinging-nettle-sage-apple juice.  It was delicious!  On Monday the 15th he invited us all to come again in the evening for another hike to determine bird songs, with a barbecue afterwards.  Wish you could join us!