I have recently returned from a week’s worth of sublime sunshine and soul soaking in the Charente region in France. Based a little more than eight miles north-east of the town of Ruffec, our home for seven days was a lovely converted dairy barn and farmhouse with fig trees in the garden and a natural salt water swimming pool that we appreciated almost as much as the inbuilt mosquito blinds.

 Surrounding the gardens were wild meadows, arable farmland and sunflower fields with patches of woodland and hedgerows that wove them all together in a tapestry of bright corn gold and forest green across the landscape.

 After nearly ten hours in the car the previous day, in the spirit of Laurie Lee, I walked out on the very next midsummer morning armed with a bottle of water, my camera and my binoculars.

 The sun was welcomingly warm and constant. Dry, hot winds stirred the meadows and even the sunflowers were too lazy in the late August heat to raise their heads to their namesake.

 A short while into my stroll, a small, salmon pinkish bird rose up from the field to my left with a single call of alarm. It’s black and white tail and wing bars along with its flattened crest gave it away before it dropped back down amongst the sunflowers further in, for it was a hoopoe. I was thrilled as it wasn’t a bird I was expecting to see and I hadn’t seen one for a couple of years since a trip to Spain some time ago. I was off to a cracking start to my French adventure.

 There were a couple of birds I was really keen on seeing. The Charente is famous for its birds of prey, especially localised populations of black kites and the rare Montagu’s harrier. I was also on the lookout for the butcher bird, the red-backed shrike. During my first walk out I bumbled past a couple of buzzards and bountiful butterflies and even tiptoed through trees searching for unseen but teasingly trilling turtle doves, but didn’t find any of my big three.

 Afternoons by the pool led to lovely encounters with more butterflies with swallowtails, gatekeepers, clouded yellows, peacocks and red admirals idly fluttering a little way off the water. One day we even found the immense green and blue bushed caterpillar of the giant peacock moth navigating its way down from one of the fig trees. Next year will definitely see me putting up a moth trap, much to the delight of my family who no doubt already feel they are travelling with the mobile division of the BBC Natural History Unit.

 After dark the bat detector revealed the not so silent world of the common pipistrelle and noctule bats which we could see hunting as they passed across the heat lamp in the barn that was luring their insect prey and therefore them into view. I was a little baffled by a pipistrelle-like blip that came in at 39kHz but have to my delight discovered that it is quite likely to be a Nathusius’s pipistrelle, a rarely recorded bat in the UK, but a little more widespread in Europe.

 As almost always the case, it was a chance encounter that led to a two out of three for me. As we drove a quiet road, I looked up and saw a buzzard. Then it occurred to me that it didn’t have a fan shaped tail and was a little small. My heart leapt, as I followed the thin, tapered tail shape, realising that it was probably a black kite instead. Then I jumped out of my seat as I lifted my binoculars to glimpse the pale grey body, tapered wings and prominent black tips of a male Montagu’s harrier. It was only a momentary glimpse, but all I needed. It was a bit much to ask the convoy to stop just for me, but a bit further on up the road I couldn’t resist as we passed a little russet coloured bird. I just had a good feeling about it and as we reversed and slid the windows down, the aptly named butcher bird hopped to and fro over a dried out bramble patch that served as his pit stop larder. A small common lizard and a number of winged insects sat perfectly impaled on the thorns. The butcher cried with glee, or more likely alarm at a Renault Espace full of humans looking at it, then disappeared into the dense brambles beyond.

 So in the end, no black kite but there was plenty to make up for it and as the saying goes, two out of three ain’t bad.