Swans on Lac du Der

Today we took the train nearly three hours east from Paris to Saint-Dizier for our annual visit with our friends Anne and Roger (the parents of Marie-Madeleine who visited us ten days ago). As usual, Roger took us on a drive to the near-by Lac du Der--the largest artificial lake in France - which supplies a substantial portion of Paris's water. Unusually, the most plentiful birds were great crested grebes (see the extra--they are the largest of the old-world grebes; there are altogether 22 grebe species in the world); we saw 3-4 dozen of them, all rather distant (hence the fuzziness of the extra). There were only a few mute swans (in the main blip), but much closer.  During spring and fall migrations many thousands of common (Eurasian) cranes stop over at the Lac du Der, but this afternoon we only saw two fly quickly overhead (we did considerably better four years ago, even earlier in the winter).   
Posted next day (early to bed last night after our strenuous train trip and drive) .