JC's Traveblog

We’ve been back from La Belle France for about six weeks now and it seems a little like a distant memory. Despite our suffering worse weather than we’d hoped, we did seem to reuse quite a lot of pixels on our wildlife and nature interests. We were lucky enough to see several species new to us and our catalogues have grown substantially. In that respect, it was a very successful trip.

It’s been a long and laborious process but I’ve finally managed to update our insect web albums. Not wishing to make any single album soporifically large, I’ve now separated butterflies from moths, and dragonflies from damselflies.

Those sharing my love of six-footed friends can see more than these two preview shots in the updated web albums here:

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Butterflies 

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Moths 

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Dragonflies 

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Damselflies

It’s always quite a thrill when I see a new species of butterfly. I don’t mean a new one to science, of course, just a species that I haven’t personally seen before. The excitement is usually caused by the more colourful species, though. This time in France, I was waxing lyrical about a white, for Darwin’s sake.

We had finally been graced with some brilliantly sunny weather and temperatures were hitting 35°C/95°F where we were staying at Fanjeaux, a little south of Carcassonne. Having been told of an attractive lake – a reservoir, actually, enclosed by a damn – with walks, we decided to go up into the Pyrenees to have a look and cool down a little. Who knows, maybe I’d get lucky and see an Apollo butterfly. [Ed: Dream on.]

It’s about a 90-minute drive up to the reservoir and, as usual, we had not made an early start so we stopped en route for a picnic lunch before hitting the walking trails. We found a delightful picnic area beside a river babbling its way down the mountain. Half way through my sandwich I glanced at a white butterfly feeding on some nearby flowers. I really only glanced at it because I was keeping an eye out for those elusive Apollos. This, of course, was not an Apollo but it did look unusual, not your ubiquitous Large White. The underside of the wings sported a fine tracery of black lines. Vague recollections of something called a Black-veined White surfaced. Butterfly hunting trumps hunger so I exchanged my half sandwich for a whole camera and bounded off to try and snag the delightful creature on pixels.

As usual with whites, the Black-veined White (Aporia crataegi) tends to rest with its wings closed. Not so much of a problem because the underside and topsides match. However, I did manage to get a shot of the topsides as it spread its wings and took off. Freezing a butterfly at take off shows a little of the interesting contortions they go through flying. This also shows the forewings looking near transparent in places so this may be a female – it’s supposedly the females that exhibit this feature. A reasonably successful first encounter.

France is seething with Marbled Whites (Melanargia galathea) so I’ve watched thousands of them flitting about but I hadn’t yet grabbed a decent picture of one; again, generally because they sit with their wings closed. This time I found one that was periodically opening its wings as it fed – well, half-opening, at least. While I was clicking away, though, I did take the underside and only when I looked later did I realize how attractively marked the underside of a Marbled White actually is.

Regrettably still no Apollo but these guys will shortly be added to my butterfly web album/catalogue.

I’ve written previously about liking the powerful effect a black background lends to some photographic images. This year, in France, we were in a position to get a few such images again. Once more it was, of course, more by luck than design. In this case, luck came in the form of a shaded woodland walk beside the very first few kilometres of La Rigole, a purpose built small canal feeding water into the Canal du Midi. Bright sunlight filtering through broad-leafed trees is a typically high contrast situation and, hey presto, some very dark backgrounds become possible.

La Rigole gave us our first encounters with Beautiful Demoiselles. That’s a  pretty crappy but nonetheless appropriate English name, in my opinion. Let’s give such a splendid creature its equally splendid Latin name: Calopteryx virgo. They proved to be a little awkward to photograph in some respects, insisting usually on sitting directly facing the sun. Consequently, the magnificent metallic blue of the males’ wings tended to be unlit. Eventually, though, I found one sitting on a pleasantly sunlit leaf  in front of a very shadowy rock beside the water. I confess that I have been a little naughtier than my usual self and cloned out a small but distracting blurred leaf that was inconsiderate enough to intrude into the frame at top left. The black is entirely natural, though.

I didn’t realize I’d be getting a dark background in this second example. The subject was an unknown critter to me and I was simply anxious to photograph it to add to my insect catalogue. The critter in question turned out to be a Hawthorn Shield Bug. It had the good grace and foresight to pose on a particularly artistic fern leaf – I just love that gracious curve up into the corner of the frame – with no surrounding clutter, poised above a wonderfully dark stretch of La Rigole.

If only all insects were as cooperative and photographically inclined.

We’re getting there – we’ve nearly waded through all our outstanding photographs from both our recent French trip and from the wedding we attended a week after returning. At least now the photographs are not on real film, I didn’t have to sit scanning hundreds of pictures in.

This year’s trip to France was not great as regards weather but, in my opinion at least, the wildlife helped to make up for it. We didn’t see some of the birds we would normally expect to see at springtime (bee-eaters, golden orioles) but I did manage to add substantially to the contents of my insect catalogues.

I’ve always been captivated by butterflies. Even as a child I collected Brooke Bond PG Tips cards and my favourite collection was the butterflies. As a child in Watford, though, I never seemed to see anything exotic myself; the cards and books were my only contact with much other than the ubiquitous Large White (a.k.a. Cabbage White). As a result, having begun regular pilgrimages to France, my eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to colourful butterflies that I’d never before seen. I was quite likely to slam the brakes on (having checked the rear-view mirror, of course), leap from the car and chase headlong across a field after a fluttering beauty.

Most captivating of all was undoubtedly the so-called Scarce Swallowtail. It really is a strikingly beautiful creature. It is also one of the more cooperative butterflies in that it sits with its wings open at rest. The picture (right) is from the days of real film (50 ASA Fuji Velvia). The Scarce Swallowtail doesn’t visit our shores but, it seemed to me, one didn’t have to go far south in France before the strangely named Scarce Swallowtail became relatively common. Not a French trip went by without my seeing at least one. There is a (regular) Swallowtail which is, apparently, a rare visitor to Britain but I had never  knowingly seen one anywhere. Had I suspected that one was about, I would undoubtedly have checked the rear-view mirror, slammed on the anchors and leapt out excitedly.

At least, that was the case until this year. This year, not only did I not see any Scarce Swallowtails but I finally saw and captured (photographically, that is) a couple of (regular) Swallowtails. The first was flitting about frenetically  on a plateau at about 1400m in the Pyrenees. The second was hungrily feeding in the Gorge de la Frau. Well, if you’re going to flit about frenetically, you have to feed well, I suppose. This time captured digitally (800 ASA pixels), here is what I consider to be my best shot.

Finally, and just because I was lucky enough to snag a Swallow in flight on this year’s trip, here is the bird after which both these fabulous creatures are named. The Scarce Swallowtail has longer “streamers”, more like the bird but, in a beauty contest, it would be hard to  pick a winner, wouldn’t it?

Fortunately, we don’t have to.

We are both a little snowed under with digital images at the moment. One week after returning from a seven week trip around France, we went to a friend’s wedding and banged off several hundred more photos. Consequently, it is taking us a while to filter out the rubbish. However, while Carol works on a wedding album, I am making some progress on our French web album.

With both of us clicking away at critters large and small, some of my progress requires the use of iSpot of which I have become a HUGE fan. We don’t always know precisely what we’ve captured on pixels and wouldn’t want to misreport what we’ve seen. The wonderful folks at iSpot usually clear things up and frequently give more information than is found in our field guides, so another big thank you to them.

As keen as we both are on nature, we do, of course, recognize that it isn’t always pretty. This last trip seemed to produce a larger than usual bag of somewhat macabre sights that we were “privileged” to witness. Of course, for the most part these situations are just nature taking its course with one subsection, the predators, trying to live of another subsection, the prey.

The first instance provides an opportunity to use a picture that is interesting enough but, perhaps, not quite good enough for a trip web album, largely because the subject was too distant, even for TheBeast, and going away (now there’s a surprise). A black kite swooped down on our favourite camp site lake, the sheep farm at Fanjeaux, and is clearly flying off with some hapless victim in its talons. You can see the head down examining its catch. The lake is teeming with thousands of frogs but there are also fish, as we shall shortly see.

Continuing in the less-disturbing vein, on one of farmer Luc’s walks, while I was off chasing very active butterfly prey harmlessly with pixels, Carol spotted a relatively small spider apparently tucking into a butterfly, more specifically a Clouded Yellow. I have no idea what species the spider could be but I may try iSpot to see if the good folks there can enlighten me. Being a fan of butterflies, it isn’t my favourite image but the spider is just doing what comes naturally. Last year we saw a very large Garden Spider tucking into my other favourite, a damselfly.

Now the feint-hearted should, perhaps, look away. In addition to literally thousands of frogs and some fish, our lake (we get very possessive about it) contained at least one water snake. One day we spotted it swimming along with a fish (a perch, I believe) in its mouth. It seemed to be having trouble with the size of its “prey item”. It struggled about over some weed but eventually left the lifeless fish alone, uneaten. What a waste! A day or so later, while stalking dragonflies and damselflies by la digue (the dyke) that retains the lake, we spotted a snake, perhaps the same one, tackling a humongous tadpole. These tadpoles were the Goliaths of tadpoles, being at least 3 ins/9 cms long with v. large heads. Those with a strong enough stomach may be able to see that the poor tadpole, still alive, has a fair sized hole in the top of its head and quite a bit of skin missing. Once again, the snake seemed to give up on its over-sized prey and left it to die a slow death.

Finally to something a little different. This has nothing to do with making a living; it just seemed to be parent brutality. The lake was home to a number of breeding waterfowl, amongst them a family of Coots with seven chicks. After watching them for a week or so we noticed one parent biting the head of one of its chicks, for no readily apparent reason. It happened several times. I assume that it was the same chick but I have no evidence to that effect. I used iSpot and was told that this behaviour is not uncommon with Coots and that they will occasionally pick on a chick until it stops following them around and, presumably, perishes. One comment from iSpot was, “it’s hard to like Coots”. I know what they mean. Maybe this has something to do with clutch size? We don’t know. Both parents were otherwise very attentive and tireless feeders of their brood. Peculiar!

[Ed: I think I’m going to have to call this Retroblog.]

A couple of years ago we were fortunate enough to have our camping pitch in the south of France (Montagnac) used by several cicadas for their emergence, their transformation into consenting adults. Since we were on top of the action in that case, I managed to record the sequence on my trusty old film camera. It is still in our web album section and remains a highlight of our contact with wildlife.

Dragonflies have a very similar lifecycle except that, whereas cicada larvae live underground for many years, dragonfly larvae live underwater for a  somewhat less time. The actual time seems to vary  by species but a year or two seems typical.

Dragonflies abound at our favourite French sheep farm campsite from which we have recently returned. This year I had noticed several husk on the outside wall of les sanitaires (the toilet and shower block) and had wondered if they might be bush crickets or some such. Dragonfly exuviae (larval cases) never occurred to me since they looked too small and, most importantly, were some distance from the lakeside. When ready to emerge, I thought dragonfly larvae clambered out of the water up the nearest suitable grass stem and performed their magical transformation right there. Not always, it seems.

One morning Carol rushed excitedly back to our pitch announcing that a dragonfly was emerging right now. Not for the first time in history, I shot off towards the toilet block armed with a camera, monopod and long lens. Why do insects continually encourage me into such freedom-threatening situations?  What is it about toilet blocks that attracts them? I really am going to get arrested one day.

Regrettably I had missed the actual emergence from the larval case and the new soon-to-be adult was hanging on it, as they do. Here, however, is a slightly reduced sequence of the wings and abdomen developing into the full-sized adult. It’s a Black-tailed Skimmer, by the way, but I can’t tell if it’s a female or a male since both start out a similar colour. Incidentally, young males are called teneral males.

… and back online after a long break. The break was caused by my being encouraged not to blog whilst travelling because we (well, Carol) had read some disturbing nonsense about insurance companies using published absence as a potential excuse to decline claims should wandering burglars happen by. A sad world, isn’t it?

Anyway, here we are again. Our 7-week trip was decidedly indifferent [Ed: that’s being kind – it was crap.] vis-a-vis the weather. For some time the silly old Mediterranean seemed to attract and hold firmly on to some nasty storm system so we had quite a bit of rain. Fortunately, we didn’t have as much rain as the poor people in the Vars region who suffered fatal flooding. The French newspapers didn’t seem to be able to believe the conditions for a couple of weeks, either. Mon Dieu, c’est grave. Eventually, however, meteorological sanity returned, normal service was resumed and our final three weeks were gloriously sunny and, sometimes, almost too hot (35°C/95°F).

Largely due to the vagaries weather, we stayed put for longer than anticipated in one particular site and didn’t try much new. As a result, our scenery photography suffered a little though Carol did finally get a few worthwhile shots in the Pyrenees. ‘T was a very educational trip for nature and wildlife, however, and we’ve returned with far too many images of critters and plants. Carol has added greatly to her wild plants catalogue and I to my Lepidoptera and Odonata catalogues. Once the marathon job of sorting and sifting is done, a selected set will be published as usual.

Meanwhile, this was my first trip away armed with TheBeast so I was keen to try a few new things. After an awful lot of failed attempts, I did finally manage to catch some birds in flight. Darwin, aren’t swallows fast!? The night heron was much more co-operative though it did seem a little confused about the time of day. To be fair, the book only says they are mostly active at night, and it was evening (hence the quality of the light).

We spent our last three weeks at our oft-visited sheep farm in Fanjeaux. It has a lake overrun with frogs which is, I suspect, what attracts the herons. There are also fish, now that the lake has been restocked after what seemed to be a localized near-extinction event.  One evening the lake was visited by a cruising black kite and, though the picture isn’t great, I can’t resist using it because it has clearly caught something in its talons.

Maybe I’m going to need a new name to replace Traveblog?

Our homebound second stay at the B&B Hotel at Orléans was much smoother our first in that the access code for our room actually worked this time. Not only that but, having connected to B&B’s free Wi-Fi about 18 months ago near Blois, Carol’s laptop and B&B were still acquainted and connected immediately once again. (Seems like we have a back-up to McWiFi.) We’d also managed to survive last night’s moules, frîtes and French karaoke without too much mental damage. Great stuff!

Driving in France on a Sunday is usually pretty easy. Calais should have been about 5 hours away and our ferry was booked for 3:00 PM. Nonetheless, we’d finished our B&B breakfast by 7:45 AM so we hit the road just after 8:00 AM. The journey was a breeze and we pulled into the ferry port at Calais just before 1:00 PM, hopefully in time for the earlier ferry at 1:30 PM. Surprise, surprise! Having been disrupted by bad weather delays on our outbound journey, Dover had been disrupted earlier this morning by bad weather delays once again. Ain’t winter wonderful? We were eventually booked onto a ferry running late but leaving at 2:40 PM.

The crossing was a little rougher than our outbound trip. The ship’s stabilizers do a great job but after almost 90 minutes Carol was feeling a little queasy. Then on came the captain to tell us that there was no berth ready for his vessel and we’d have to wait outside port being tossed around for another 30 minutes. Blast (or words to that effect)! Actually the delay was shorter than anticipated (how many times is that the case?) and we docked at 4:30 PM, the time we should have docked had we been on our originally planned ferry sans disruption.

The traffic in England is always a shock compared to France. Even having suffered a couple of French rush hours this time, the jaM25 always amazes me. At 4:30 PM on a winter Sunday afternoon we get stuck in four lanes of stationary traffic. Just where the hell are all those people coming from and going to at that time of day on a naff winter weather Sunday? Nonetheless, we fought our way through it and were home by 6:30PM. Not a bad journey, really.

In the blog for this trip I’ve been concentrating on the ewes and lambs and have overlooked the place we were actually staying. I’ve covered it during our summer trips but seeing this part of the French countryside in winter was also new to us so scattered around in this entry are a few photos of it at this time of year.

Luc and Nadine were wonderful hosts and they both have lovely families. Everyone we met was very friendly and welcoming. Helping with the ewes and lambs was a terrific experience and we had a great time. We didn’t really want to come back home though the rest will do us good.

We were up at the usual 6:15 AM to help Luc and Nadine with the brebis (ewes) and agneaux (lambs) on the early morning shift. Last night, on the just-before-bed patrol, Luc had put a new mother and her twins into a crèche. This morning, her twins had become triplets overnight, and a very fine family they made, too.

Good time to leave – on a high note. We had finished our duties, had had breakfast and were looking forward to a 6-7 hour drive north to Orléans. We bad our fond farewells to Luc and Nadine and hit the road, not really wanting to leave. This is a location in France that I could live.

Mercifully our journey was uneventful and we checked into our B&B Hotels reservation at Orléans just before 6:00 PM. There’s free wi-fi at B&B Hotels and we had half a BIB (bag-in-box) of wine to finish so I settled down to drink and write (yesterday’s blog posting). Over the road, quite literally, there’s a restaurant we’d seen on the way down offering moules et frîtes (mussels and chips/fries) every Friday and Saturday. After blogging, at about 7:45 PM, over we popped.

The place was lit but relatively quiet. We were shown to a table and both ordered mussels. What I thought was a DJ appeared on the stage and played some French (c)rap music. He began to sing over it. ‘T was OK but just OK. Somebody handed this “DJ” a piece of paper which I took to be a request. It was, just that, a request. The requester took the stage, grabbed a mike and began to sing. We’d stumbled into a karaoke restaurant serving the best moules et frîtes this side of Calais. Christ!!

Yesterday I put up with children to get my fix of lambs. Today, in order to get my fix of moules et frîtes, I had to put up with karaoke. I have never been into any form of karaoke anywhere at any time before in my life. I just do not understand it. I cannot see why Joe Public would want to make a complete and utter arse of himself in public on stage with a microphone. I most certainly cannot understand why Joe A. N. Other-Public would want to listen to Joe Public making a complete and utter arse of himself in public on stage with a microphone. Christ, some “professional” acts are bad enough but you only have to listen to local radio phone-ins to realize what a complete plonker Joe Public is. Why do they do it? What is the fascination? It’s utterly and completely beyond my ken.

Having said that, the food was good (not great but good). We are, after all, in an industrial estate just off the motorway on the outskirts of Orléans, and one karaoke girl, I have to confess, had the breathy voice of an angel. Very Interesting. What more can I say?

I’ve had a lot of firsts this trip: tending lambs, feeding sheep, eating genuine cassoulet, fricassée and raclette … now I wind up in a karaoke restaurant for the first time in my life. Pretty damn good for a single week.

Ain’t travel wonderful?

For those who know me well, Friday would have sounded like my idea of Hell. Yes, I love animals (with the one exception of dogs) and we were certainly surrounded by animals: 320 brebis (ewes), 6 belliers (rams) and about 300 agneaux (lambs). However, a cloud on the horizon was rapidly approaching. At 10:00 AM today Luc and Nadine were playing host to a pre-school visit of 21 children aged between 2½ and 5 years. We would, of course, enjoy helping Luc and Nadine make ready for the visit on our normal early-morning shift. However, Luc and Nadine tend to appreciate our photographs and wondered if we would document the event.  Gulp! 21 young children!!? “OK, certainly – we’d be delighted.”

[Aside: We were a little concerned about taking photos of kids but permission was readily granted by their teachers and we were happy to agree not to publish any on the Internet … so you aren’t getting those.]

The 7:00 AM – 9:00 AM preparation went well. The older group of lambs even seemed to be behaving themselves more by not hiding under the ewes and suckling while we were trying to round them up into their pen.  The ewes are distracted with their food on the conveyor belt and held in place while the lambs are rounded up. This is essential to clear the ground for the floor-covering straw to be refreshed. Some lambs take advantage of the trapped ewes, grab teats and start suckling. We play baddy and drag the lambs unceremoniously from mother’s milk, carrying them to their corral. Occasionally, we may pause to cuddle one. After all, cuddling a lamb is one of life’s great treats. Why else did we drive 800+ miles?

After breakfast the bus load of junior terrorists arrived. Carol and I joined Luc, Nadine and the kids, in my case with a little trepidation. I shouldn’t have worried; the children were wonderful and much better behaved than I would have imagined watching English kids. There were only six boys in the group; 15 were girls. Some of them were completely captivating. (Yes, I really said that.) The day was completely awful weather-wise but the children never complained, did as they were told and didn’t run riot. Spirits were high with the lambs but, after all, that’s why they were there. One ewe even dutifully gave birth in their presence. The unfortunate youngster was regrettably “unviable” but, like a true professional, Luc hid this uncomfortable fact from the kids very well.

Everyone had a great time, including me. The kids and teachers came equipped with a picnic, despite the weather, and Luc provided Roquefort cheese for them to taste which completed the cycle nicely. Nadine had spent the previous day making countless crepes for an afternoon treat. Ya gotta love French; the crepe mixture contained rum, for 2½ and 5 year-olds. Brilliant! I love them!! [Aside: It’s not a problem, the alcohol cooks out when the crepes are fried leaving just the rum flavour.]

Slightly less well behaved than the kids on occasion were the lambs. They have a strange habit of sneaking through the access points for the ewes and clambering onto the conveyor belt containing the food. It’s like walking on the adults’ table. They also tend to clamber on the table top covering the food they should be eating, which is a strange mixture of clay and pellets.

Working with this loveable collection for a week has been a pleasure and a privilege. We’ll do tomorrow’s morning shift before we leave but, just to finish off, here’s one of our favourite lambs. Totally irresistible!