Lac de Bairon: The Canal Reservoir's 151 Birds, the Drowned Village and the Lock Flight at Le Chesne

Required Activities

• From the hide, work the upstream pond and the reedbed at its tail rather than the water the boats are on, and listen for four reed birds the site is known for: the little bittern, the sedge warbler, the great reed warbler and Cetti's warbler

• Walk out onto the dyke that divides the two ponds and compare them: one side is a reserve, the other has boats on it. Then look at the waterline and work out how far the lake has dropped — in late summer and autumn the canal draws it right down, and the mud that comes up grows a turf of water plants that is there in no other season

• Climb to the farm-chapel of Saint-Brice above the water and work out from there where the old village of Bairon stood: the commune was carved up between Sauville, Le Chesne and Louvergny in 1829 and the lake was let into its valley in the 1840s, leaving this one building on the high ground

• Walk down the top of the lock flight from the summit pound at Le Chesne and count how many of the 26 locks you can see at once: the canal falls to the Aisne in nine kilometres with an average drop of 2.68 m a lock, and every litre of it comes out of Bairon

• Take a boat or a board out from the nautical base on the new pond at Le Chesne, and notice how the two ponds have been divided up: the boats are kept to this one so that the nesting birds on the other are left alone