L’étang del Sale, l’un des meilleurs sites pour voir le Faucon d’Eléonore en France

Eleonora’s Falcon (Falco eleonorae) is a medium-sized falcon. There are two colour morphs: The adult dark morph is all sooty brown, with black underwing coverts. The light morph is more like a juvenile Eurasian Hobby, but has buff underparts, and also shows the contrast between the black underwing coverts and paler base to the flight feathers. This species breeds on islands in the Mediterranean particularly. This is a long-distance migrator, wintering in Madagascar.
It disappeared from France as a breeder during the 19th Century, where it used to nest on the Hyères Islands (Var). It is nevertheless always possible to search for this species on the French Mediterranean coast in Spring (end of May-June) and in Autumn (end of August-September).
Stephane Doppagne watched some Eleonora’s Falcons during his holidays in Corsica in June 2009. The most remarkable data was a group of 14 individuals hunting in the south of the Biguglia Lake the 25th of June, but he didn’t see them again during a second visit a few days later.  The observation of 1 to 4 Falcons in the reserve of the Etang del Sale (Haute-Corse department) could indicate a regular seasonal stop-over of this species during at least 10 days.