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In Search of Butterflies at Le Col des Auzines

30/7/2017

By Lesley McLaren Photos by Bruce Hyde

Around mid June, Bruce and I headed to a new area to look for butterflies. Our expectations were high, following a tip-off from members of the GOR who, five days earlier, had seen 34 different species there. Their list included the elusive, splendidly named two-tailed pasha, which Bruce hadn't seen before and I'd only briefly glimpsed once or twice.

At Îlle-sur-Têt we headed north-west, into unfamiliar territory beyond les Orgues. The winding road gently climbed, offering spectacular views of the north side of Canigou - a side we rarely see - with its remnants of snow stubbornly refusing to melt. After passing through the little village of Mantalba-le-Château and tiny hamlet of Trévillach, we pulled into a surprisingly big car park in the middle of nowhere, on the crest of a hill. According to our map, this was our destination: le Col des Auzines.

For June, it was very hot, but also very windy, which didn't bode so well for butterfly hunting. Photos are often essential for identification - especially of the blues and fritillaries - and even if we could hold our cameras still enough in these blowy conditions, the butterflies were unlikely to settle for long.

Loaded up with kit and one dog on a lead, we set off down the only visible dirt track. The terrain was more akin to the Corbières than most of the Albères: few trees on the slopes, more scrub, with occasional rocky outcrops. Shrubs seemed to be predominantly rock rose (which had stopped flowering long ago), gorse, broom, and what I think was some kind of myrtle. To our surprise - considering the tip-off - there weren't many plants in flower, and no sign of any running water nearby to attract butterflies in numbers.

In the hope that the habitat might change further on, we continued. A wooded gully fell away to our left, whose trees and impenetrable undergrowth indicated the presence of water in other seasons. Hillsides to our right.

A few butterflies began to make an appearance - Spanish gatekeepers and large walls for the most part, skittishly leading us further down the track. A clouded yellow and one or two Cleopatras fluttered past without stopping. Most couldn't have stopped if they'd wanted to.

What brought us to a sudden halt, however, was a loud, harsh, bark, echoing up from the gully on our left. The kind of sound that lifts the hairs on the back of your neck. Whatever made it was big, not canine. Bruce and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised, while my dog "pointed", sniffing and straining to give chase. Was it a stag? Do stags call much, outside the rutting season? The bark continued intermittently, moving slowly, steadily up the gully, roughly in the same direction as us. We couldn't see a thing through the vegetation but nor did we hear a single twig crack or leaf rustle. We moved on too and, when we reached a left hand bend, the animal barked again, somewhere above us now, on our right. It had crossed the path perhaps seconds before we got there. As it moved further away, my dog was desperate to follow. Given the expanse of wildness here, it was tempting to think the beast was a lynx (they can make a bark-like sound, and sightings are occasionally reported further north, in the Corbières), however I thought it more likely to be a hind. (Robin has since suggested roe deer buck or doe, as they have a different annual cycle from the red, giving birth and rutting much earlier in the year.)

Just ahead we discovered a bigger flower patch (scabious mostly) with butterflies, so we stopped, unloaded rucksacks, and hung around for a while - cameras poised. It was here where we found a single, stubby strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo). We'd been looking out for them because they are the larval food plant of pashas. Where there are Strawberry trees, the butterflies are often in abundance, so it's said. This one was in a small fenced off area (more shrine than garden, with no habitable building for miles), so we didn't think it was self-seeded.

One or two pashas did whizz by (or the same one once or twice), but we really only got a fleeting impression of size (similar to swallowtails) and a flash of orange edging to dark brown wings. On a still day they glide like swallowtails too. As their name suggests, they have two long "tails". Underside wing markings are more ornate than the uppers, but we needed the butterflies to settle, wings closed, in order to see those. They didn't co-operate so our ambition to observe them properly is put forward to another year.

Species that did settle included a small tortoiseshell, swallowtail and quite a few whites (Bath and Iberian marbled). Several blues too, photos of which subsequently had both of us in a head-scratching, fidget-inducing spot-the-difference exercise, trying to separate the common from the Chapman's and Escher's. Not to mention the expletive-triggering Ilex verus False Ilex hairstreak challenge. For once, even the fritillaries proved easier. A highlight of the day was a white admiral. These probably aren't scarce but I hardly ever see them.

Click on photos for larger image

For a while we walked on, passing signs of former human occupation: a high stone wall and "casot" (outbuilding). When a derelict house came into view, we wondered if it was somehow connected to the little garden we'd found earlier. Plant life wasn't changing, however, so we headed back.

In all, we idenitifed just 17 species, against the 34 seen only a few days earlier on a still day. Given the conditions we met, perhaps this tally wasn't so bad. Our region has many micro climates and it was interesting to learn that Robin and Martine were having a very different experience on the same day, south of us and much higher, in the wind-free foothills of Canigou. Robin's blog (dated 7th July) describes an impressive spectacle of butterflies - in terms of sheer numbers, if not species.

I had also been told to look out for rock thrushes at the Col des Auzines. The males have blue-grey heads, rich rust-orange undersides and tails. I'd never seen one - and wasn't to see one that day either. Just about the only birds in evidence were linnets. Not even a buzzard or short-toed eagle dropped by. Mind you, our eyes were down most of the time.

Beetles were in abundance, including one new to Bruce and me, which scurried purposefully down the sandy track towards us. Heeding the orange-red warning stripes on its long black body, we didn't attempt to pick it up for a closer look, or let my dog sniff it. Just as well, because if threatened they can exude an oily substance that irritates skin and can cause it to blister. Which is why they are called red-striped oil beetles, or blister beetles.

As far as butterflies were concerned, the outing was perhaps a little disappointing, and we hope to return next year on a calm day. It's also an area worth exploring just for its hills, steep gorges, limestone cliffs and caves. Mile upon mile of wildness sticks in your memory. For Bruce, that day might also stay memorable for the tick he acquired, and neither of us will soon forget the haunting bark of The Beast.

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Rotten Pickings for Birds in the Orchards

26/7/2017

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By Lesley McLaren

Yesterday morning in the orchards the temperature felt fresher, thanks to a tramontane, so when I heard the burbling call of bee eaters coming from the far corner of the apricot plantation, I extended my dog's walk to try to see them. I'd forgotten that once fruit picking is well underway, as it is now, this area turns into the least pleasant part of the circuit. It's where all the reject apricots and nectarines are dumped.

The smell of fermenting fruit was almost overpowering as we approached, and that was attracting great numbers of flies. The only upside was that the flies were attracting birds. Bee eaters were certainly here - about twenty of them. Most were flying high and against the light, with only one drifting low enough for me to spot a flash of turquoise and yellow.

In contrast, swallows and house martins were swooping and diving in all directions, sometimes skimming past, inches from the ground. I imagine they only had to fly with their beaks open, rather than chase anything down. Other species, including white wagtails (lots of those) and hoopoes, were picking insects off the heaps of blackening fruit. Even the male woodchat shrike and youngsters were cashing in on the buffet libre. Perfect for fattening up before their long journey to Africa. I just hoped none of them would overdose on drunken insects.

Although I had my camera, the birds weren't co-operative. The only things that flew anywhere near my dog and me were bluebottles. And I feared less welcome insects might soon follow. We were standing alongside a deep ditch, whose banks were overgrown with a mixture of purple, yellow and white wildflowers. There were even a few bulrushes, which I've never noticed there before. It was a pretty sight, but I suspected that at the bottom of that mass of vegetation there might still be stagnant water. The ideal breeding ground for tiger mosquitoes.

We didn't linger.

As we circled round, the resident pair of buzzards put in a brief appearance (I wonder if they have bred successfully again this year), and a few minutes later, through binos, I picked up the pale underside of a short-toed eagle. The tramontane was forcing it to fly lower than usual, giving me the best of few sightings that I've had this year. Gliding directly into the wind, wings bent, its profile was almost osprey-like. But the contrast between the whiteness of its body, tail and wings, and the dark "hood" over its throat and upper chest, made it unmistakable. In another six weeks or so, these eagles will be heading south again.

The bee eaters were the first I've seen since spring, which makes me think they might be in the vanguard of the autumn migration. They're usually off very early. The behaviour of other birds is turning more autumnal too. Most have stopped singing. Already a small flock of starlings has appeared in the vineyards; goldfinches are gathering in greater numbers ...

Change is in the air.

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Crab Spider (Part 2) - A Month In Her Life

25/7/2017

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By Lesley McLaren

I've been frightened of spiders since childhood. When I was six, during a family picnic, one of those tiny-bodied, long-legged ones ran across my hand and onto the strawberry I was about to bite into. Such traumas can mark you for life. Yet here I am now, blogging about arachnids. Crab spiders have especially captured my interest. In June I wrote about a female that proved to be an efficient and formidable bee killer. After she gorged on three in one day, if she was representative of her species I began to worry for the local bee population. However, this was nature at work; intervention on my part, by either destroying or moving her, was out of the question. Instead, I found myself monitoring her behaviour. She intrigued me and, by happy coincidence, had settled on a salvia flower spike that was easy to observe and photograph. Over the coming weeks I would witness far more action than anticipated.

It started slowly, though. The day after her beefest of June 21st, she ate nothing. This was hardly surprising - she must have felt quite bloated. Over the next four days she only caught a small fly and one bee. Then nothing again. I put this down to bad luck and, relieved for the bees, turned my attention to the rest of the garden, where I felt sure I'd find more of her kind.

There was one on the marjoram - a much smaller individual, quite the wrong colour. It must have recently moved from a yellow flower and not yet morphed to pink. Two more turned up in the front garden - a male and female on the same flower. She was quite a bit smaller than the one in the salvia, and he was tiny in comparison with both. Only once did I see one of them (the female) with a kill: a butterfly like the one whose lucky escape I recorded in my June blog.

Click photos for larger image.

On the morning of June 27th, back with the female still lurking on the same salvia spike, I noticed she had stuck several petals together, forming them into a kind of shallow bowl, in which she was sitting. The next day she was in exactly the same place, but had spun herself a thick mattress of silk, and added dead flower and seed head padding around the sides and base. It was, of course, a nest.

I had to find out more. According to the internet, she would have laid eggs on a petal. After having folded and sealed the petal, she would guard the eggs for the next three weeks until they hatched. During this time she would stop eating. Then she would die.

To me this helped explain the beefest: she'd been fattening herself up. Just as female mosquitoes need to suck blood for egg production, so my spider might have had to take in extra food to help her eggs develop. She might also have been building energy reserves to sustain her through the long wait. I suddenly had more respect - as well as some sympathy - for my spider.

On closer inspection she appeared shrunken and much more wrinkled than before. Initially I assumed this was because she was dehydrated, and that she would steadily decline. I've since learned that the weight loss was mainly due to her having offloaded all those eggs. The following photos show her before and after laying.

Click photos for larger image.

Two days on she added a lot more dead plant matter to the nest, covering most of the silk. I never saw her do this, so suspect all construction work took place at night. By now those eggs were well insulated against the fierce heat. Well protected from predators too; if anything flew near, she would lash out - not to kill but to warn off. The bees could feed safely, all around her.

The trouble was, although the plant (bog sage - Salvia uliginosa, I think) was perfect for ambushing pollinating insects, it turned out to be a lousy nest site. The thin flower spike she'd chosen, on the outside edge of the plant, had been relatively short when she made her nest close to the tip; within a couple of weeks it had grown to nearly 1.5m and was totally at the mercy of the wind.

Where we live, at the foot of Mt. Neoulous, southerlies can be fiercer than the prevailing north westerly. For several consecutive days they lashed the garden, with the result that the nest came adrift from most of its moorings. What used to be the top was now the side.

I know webs are strong but these silk tethers were being severely tested. How much longer could they last? To my surprise, mother spider never carried out any repairs but clung on, in an increasingly precarious position, until the nest hung almost upside down.

I was even more surprised when, over two days, she caught a couple of bees that must have flown just too close. So she wasn't on complete hunger strike. This served as a useful reminder that the internet can't always be trusted. Could that also mean she might not die when her young hatched? It didn't seem logical to me that she would suddenly start eating again if she knew she was dying.

One kill was a big bumblebee with a huge pollen load. It had worked so hard to gather that.

As she feeds on the bumblebee, it's getting crowded at the nest.

Around this time I made my one and only small intervention: I lifted a trailing string of seed heads - bound together with silk - and stuck them back on the stem. This righted the nest a little, so the top was closer to where it should be. Short of using superglue, there wasn't much else I could do.

Then one morning I found the nest deserted. I wondered if the spider had herself been predated. Or perhaps the eggs should have hatched by now but were sterile. Had she abandoned them?

None of the above.

She'd been there all the time, superbly camouflaged under a nearby flower. In classic ambush posture - front legs outstretched - she was hungry. After an hour or so, she returned to the nest, still hungry.

On the evening of July 19th, the wind rose again; another fierce southerly whipped itself into a full-blown gale. The nest, hanging by what looked like a single rope of silk, was smacked back and forth, round and round like a swingball on a flower stem post. I found my eyes continually drawn from book or television to living room window. From my chair, I could just make out the nest. At times the whole plant was nearly flattened by a vicious gust, only to bounce back and be swept in the opposite direction.

It was around three weeks since my spider created that bowl of petals. She was so close to success. If she could just get through tonight...

By my bedtime the wind had died. It was dark now, but I had to check. I grabbed a torch and padded across the lawn.

No nest.

Was I looking at the right spike? Of course I was. The nest had gone. Vanished. Obliterated.

Or not.

Presumably Mum would have flown with it, spinning a safety line to save them all. Where could it have ended up? Oh no, I might already have trodden on it - on her - as I crossed the lawn.

I swept the torch across the grass. No flattened nest.

Come the following afternoon, despite feeling rather foolish on my knees, parting blades of grass, peering into and under plants, and lifting leaves blown off the vine, I finally found it. It was close to the ground in the middle of a lavender bush next to the salvia. There was no obvious sign of Mum, so I carefully reached down with a twig, and gently lifted the thin end. She was underneath. In my head, I punched the air. Although she might be more vulnerable to predators at that height (at least two lizards share that border), she would be much more sheltered. I just had to remember not to deluge the bush with water from above.

Like an anxious grandmother-in-waiting, I checked progress each morning for the next three days. Mum was still underneath the nest. Still alive, not eating. Any minute now, surely?

On the fourth day after the gale, I couldn't see so much as an eye or tip of a leg sticking out from under the nest. Carefully, I lifted one end again. Mum had gone. The nest itself looked even more fragile than before - empty, even. Were we a grandmother? I knew the babies would only emerge after their first moult, leaving skin casts behind. Those might be visible. I gently picked the nest up, only to realise it was crawling - with tiny spiderlings.

Now I saw lots of them, everywhere - like white money spiders - running over the nest, my hand, up and down lavender stems and leaves; trampling one another; leaping into the void, trailing a safety line; investigating my camera... Such an exciting new world to explore. And no training required. When stationary, they instinctively adopted ambush position: front legs wide, to fasten on ... a mite?

I must have arrived at just the right moment because they were quickly dispersing; some already running a line to the salvia.

While watching them - probably with a silly grin on my face - I caught sight of their mother a couple of feet away in the gazania. Very much not dead.

She spent the rest of the afternoon there, finally settling in the bullseye of a sunny flower. I wondered if she'd catch anything because her whiteness starkly contrasted with the petals; it would take her a few days to change. As it turned out, while I was getting my lunch, she caught a small bee. By then I couldn't begrudge another bee death - not after all she'd been through.

I've no idea how many spiderlings emerged, nor how many would have made it through their first day. Not all, I'm sure. That night they experienced their first thunderstorm.

Torrential rain wasn't a problem for Mum. The very next morning she was on another salvia spike. Again she had chosen one on the outermost edge of the plant and, as usual, had set up ambush under a flower facing outwards, towards the lawn. Was this significant? Perhaps she believed that bees might visit the outer flowers first. That would make sense, though I'm not sure it's always the case. I get the impression (probably wrongly) that they tend to head for the tallest stems first - or those with the most open flowers. She was also facing north, north-west - theoretically the shady side of the plant. But the sun is so high for most of the day, I'm not sure this made much difference. Enough of one, perhaps, for a crab spider.

If my eyes didn't deceive me she was now tinged yellow. Her body was still catching up with her day in the gazania. Over the next few hours, while this remarkable creature silently did her thing, the bin lorry screamed past our garden, followed by a hissing street sweeper; a helicopter thundered low overhead; a distant hedge trimmer droned, and kids on holiday squealed and splashed in the neighbours' swimming pool...

Worlds apart. Oblivious of each other, it seemed, except for me standing in between.

I was once again preparing my lunch when the spider grabbed hers. A ginger bumblebee this time - same as the first day I saw her, just over a month ago. Of all the bees that visit my garden, the gingers are my favourites. However, although I mourned the poor thing, strangely, I found myself still rooting for Mother Spider.

Another day on, and she has turned pale green. She's not shrivelled, she's plump and spry. Today, though, due to another high wind, there have been few bees about. No kill.

What of the spiderlings? Forty-eight hours since their appearance, I've seen one, on a dandelion. Already yellowish, it seems to be feeding on minuscule, wingless blackfly. A reminder that although these spiders prey on bees, they also help control garden pests.

The film below is a compilation of video clips and stills, following the highs and lows of recent weeks. (Best viewed full screen.)

A Month in the Life of a Crab Spider from Lesley McLaren on Vimeo.

If there's an epilogue to this drama it's that I suspect this female is in the family way again. Further research has turned up a paper by American naturalist and crab spider authority Douglass H. Morse. His studies show that females do sometimes make opportunistic kills while on the nest; that eggs usually hatch in just under four weeks, at which point the mothers don't necessarily die. Some live for two years, and the main threat to life - apart from predators - is cold winter weather.

My latest theory is that the subject of my study left the nest to try and catch prey because she was already pregnant again, and the imperative to feed herself up had been triggered. It's possible that she's now a few days away from producing another brood. If so, has she learned not to nest in salvia? Somehow I doubt it. Absurdly, I can't wait to find out. I also can't wait for delivery of Douglass H. Morse's 392-page book, which should answer more questions than I can possibly dream up about the species.

It's over fifty years since that family picnic, and I'm thinking this crab spider might have cured me of my phobia.

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Summer Fledglings Learn to Hunt and Fly

22/7/2017

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By Lesley McLaren

In May the local bird group alerted members to an apparent dearth of woodchat shrike in the region. Although not officially designated a species at risk, its favourite habitat of vineyards, orchards and scrubby grassland in the Roussillon plain is being eaten up year on year by building projects; we were asked to look out for this handsome little butcher bird.

They are summer visitors, similar in size to a wheatear - bigger than a sparrow, smaller than a song thrush; nicknamed "butcher birds" because, like other shrikes, they have a gruesome habit of hanging dead prey on thorns. I have yet to find one of these larders, but for several years running have seen an adult (always on its own) in roughly the same area on my regular vineyard and orchard circuit. Early this spring I saw one on two occasions, but in a slightly different section of the walk. Come April, I switched to walking in the hills during the worst of the tick season (ticks can be particularly bad in the vineyards, where sheep are sometimes grazed), and only returned to to the plain around the beginning of this month.

In the last three days, to my delight, I've identified two small family groups of woodchat shrike. Except that up to now, per group, I've only ever seen one adult and no more than three young in the same place at the same time. One lot I keep finding in an area of apricot, olive, pine and a few oak trees; the other, among vines and oaks (exactly where I've seen a single bird in previous years). Only two or three hundred metres of grassland separate these micro habitats, which isn't far as the shrike flies. So I've been trying to work out if one family of five or six young has split into two, to facilitate feeding and training duties, or if, in fact, there are two families of about three young each. I've learned that the first scenario is quite possible. Equally, it's not unusual for this species to nest very close together, but in those circumstances adults usually have spats along the territorial border. So far I haven't witnessed any arguments.

Yesterday I photographed one parent in the olive and apricot habitat, and this morning finally captured the other in the vines. On checking the pictures, it's obvious straightaway that they are different birds. But which sex? If both the same, I could safely assume we have two families.

Unfortunately, sexing woodchat shrike isn't easy; they have very similar plumage. Apart from a bright chestnut cap, which extends down the back of their neck, they are black and white. A white rump and bold white flashes on their wings are especially distinctive in flight. According to my book, the main difference is that the female has a little more white around her eye. Impossible to spot that in the field, and inconclusive in my photos at maximum magnification. Today I asked the GOR for their opinion. Apparently there can be a lot of variation between individuals, but the consensus is that my rather more drab adult with blobs on the chest, is most probably a female (below left), while the other, with brighter, smarter plumage, is a male (below right). I might have have guessed.
Click on photos for larger image.

Here's the male again. Upset by my presence, he was sounding a harsh, rattling alarm and wagging his long tail - from side to side as well as up and down.

Below: two juveniles. They are quite spotty, but already have the beginnings of wing and tail patterns. You might also just be able to make out the little hook on the end of the beak, which is invaluable for dealing with their favourite food: mainly insects, but occasionally small vertebrates. Most of the time they keep watch from a bush or post, and drop onto prey. They occasionally catch insects on the wing, and I did watch one youngster attempt this today - without success. They still have quite a bit to learn before their long, first journey to sub-Saharan Africa - which may begin as early as next month.

I was amused to watch two chasing Dad at one point, and I wondered if they were harrassing him for something in his beak that I couldn't see. Denied an easy meal, were they being forced to hunt for themselves, or was it a game? In many respects they are already behaving and sounding like grown ups, but from time to time they regress to begging. To me, their begging call sounds like the French word for "quick". Vite...vite...vite...vite, they cry. Dad doesn't seem to be falling for that any more, but Mum is still a soft touch. She gave in to this one.

In the clip below, the same youngster is still reluctant to fend for itself.

Woodchat shrike - juvenile begging parent from Lesley McLaren on Vimeo.

In the next clip, you can hear the alarm call and see how the male flashes his tail about, to intimidate the likes of me. For a while, one of his offspring is alongside, practising tail-wagging and his spot-and-drop hunting technique.

Woodchat shrike (male with juvenile) from Lesley McLaren on Vimeo.

My conclusion, at least for the time being, is that there is one family of five or six young, split into two groups.

This behaviour strikes me as practical, and a clever way of increasing the survival chances of the whole brood. It also intrigues me. If I understand correctly, adult pairs aren't hardwired to do this every year as a matter of course. So how do they make the decision, and how do they communicate it to each other and their young? My first guess is that it depends on numbers. It's normal for five or six eggs to be laid. But if all chicks fledge, this number of mouths to feed could be the trigger (which then begs another question: can woodchat shrike count?). My second guess is that the female feeds only some of the young once they've fledged (which would indicate that adults can tell their offspring apart). Those individuals imprint on her and follow her wherever she flies. Meanwhile, the male feeds only the others, and they imprint on him. These suppositions have no scientific foundation whatsoever but are, in lieu of further research, my best stab at thinking like a shrike.

Metres away from all this activity, golden orioles are having flying lessons. Yesterday an adult male - tropical bright - was accompanied by three others that were much greener. One might have been his mate, or all were juveniles. (Females and young can be easily mistaken for green woodpeckers, which are only a little bigger than orioles.) They seemed to be having great fun zooming acrobatically back and forth through a stand of pines until, for a moment, three of them took a breather in the same tree.

These birds are notoriously difficult to capture on camera and this is the closest I've been to any that have made themselves visible. They are extremely shy - more often heard than seen - which is frustrating, and a great pity because they are so beautiful. The male contrived to hide his head each time I clicked the shutter. After he had flown off, I did manage a couple of slightly better shots of a juvenile eating a small pine cone. Even then, as you can see, I never managed to get the whole bird in the same picture!
Click on photos for larger image.

I usually stay on the dirt tracks but yesterday, while stalking shrikes and orioles, I crossed a couple of patches of grassland, which had been cut for hay earlier in the season. It was nearly lunchtime and, as the heat rose to sizzling, so the cicadas and grasshoppers turned up the volume. In one rather more overgrown corner, they were everywhere, leaping out of my way as I brushed through stubble and young, green shoots. I was now back in Mother Shrike's territory. No wonder she and her kids liked this spot.

Temporarily distracted from birdwatching, I took a closer look. There seems to be a huge variety of grasshopper species, and all are so well camouflaged.
Click for larger image.

Shortly after snapping those two, something much bigger scurried from under my feet.

At the other end of the size scale to my crab spider of last month's blog, yes, it is as massive and hairy as it looks, and is another master - or possibly mistress in this case - of disguise. It's a type of wolf spider (Hogna radiata). It takes refuge in tunnels, and actively hunts for prey instead of spinning a web or waiting in ambush. I blogged about wolf spiders in November 2015 when I came across a female of the same or similar species, with young on her back. I didn't manage to photograph that extraordinary sight and haven't seen another one until today. If I return to this grassy spot with my camera in the autumn, perhaps I'll be lucky and capture one who's carrying her spiderlings - or even, you never know, teaching them to hunt and run.

Inevitably, new discoveries lead to new questions. Now I'm wondering if woodchat shrike prey on wolf spiders...

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Short Marine Blog

9/7/2017

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By Robin Noble

When we are out at sea, exploring our amazing coast, we are always conscious of the endless eastern horizon, that great expanse of ocean; (yes, I know the Mediterranean is just a “sea”, but it is, in fact, enormous, and gives me the same feeling as looking across the Atlantic from Orkney used to do!). We do get to peek under that endless surface, when we are snorkelling around the coastal rocks, but once further out, it is hard to get any real sense of what goes on, under or over the water, as we constantly look eastwards, and generally, see nothing.

But, sometimes, it is different. One day recently, we watched a trawler coming into Port Vendres: they had obviously had a catch, and were gutting the fish. The boat was followed by a great crowd of gulls, but there were other birds, too, which must have been lured from much further out than we normally venture, as we very rarely, or never, see them. There were several young gannets, in various shades from dark blue-grey to blotchy white, but there were also birds belonging to a family which we immediately recognised from our (Scottish) West Coast background. These were, clearly, shearwaters, wonderful birds, which wander the oceans of the Earth, only coming ashore to breed. We had once before seen members of this family here: the Greater Shearwater, large and handsome, but these birds were smaller, plainer, if equally brownish in contrast to the blue-black of the Manx with which we are so familiar. They have to be Balearic Shearwaters, which breed on the islands of the same name, but wander the Mediterranean from Greece westwards, and even may be seen at times around the British Coast and in the North Sea. This we discovered once home; on this day we were just happy to watch their characteristic looping flight, as they described figures-of-eight around the trawler.

And yesterday we were enjoying the slightly turbulent water around Cap Béar. Here we briefly saw another of the shearwaters, and then, ahead of us, a rather wobbly, tall fin. Intrigued, we hastened towards it, and for a quick moment, had a good view of one of the strangest creatures of the sea. It was a sunfish. These, to be honest, look to me like one of Nature’s jokes, as it seems simply like the front half of a fish, which has unfortunately lost its rear end. I would have to admit that in the water it did not look quite as weird as in some of the photos you see. We did not have long to admire it, no time to get the cameras out, as it was obviously aware of the presence of the boat, and submerged quite quickly. It seems they can grow to great size – some being over three metres in length – but ours was probably about one metre. Its diet apparently consists of jellyfish, of which as a swimmer who does not wear a wetsuit, I can only approve!

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Biodiversity

7/7/2017

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By Robin Noble (photos by Martine Howard)

What used to be called nature conservation is as prone to fads, fashions and buzzwords as anything else, and "biodiversity" may well seem to some folk to be just another example. As a concept, it is at least easy to understand, as it simply means the diversity of "life-forms", really of life itself, and understanding its importance begins with the recognition that somehow, through time, our home planet has ended up endowed with a myriad of living organisms. These range in size from microscopic bacteria to elephants and whales, and they all are, somehow, more interconnected and interdependent than one can easily comprehend. We are slowly learning the nature and scope of this web of life, whether it is an understanding of the importance of mycorrhizal fungi in the root systems of trees, or the significance of the colonies of bacteria to which our own bodies are, whether we like it or not, the constant hosts.

Just as it is now authoritatively believed that after heavy treatment with serious antibiotics, our bodily systems may suffer seriously in a number of ways, so too do many of us feel that the maintenance of as much as possible of the overall "web-of-life", (that complex natural system which was in place across the entire surface of the planet before our species began to destroy it), is crucial to the continued function of the life support systems with which Earth provides us. Living in an area with quite a significant population, with expanding towns and villages, all of which eat into the natural environment of PO, it is at least comforting to realise what a reservoir of biodiversity this part of France is.

There are two crucial aspects of biodiversity; one is precisely that diversity, the great variety of life forms - like the fascinating insects which Lesley has been photographing and writing about lately. The idea here is that each type, for instance, of insect plays its part in the crucial processes of the world, whether it is recycling decaying matter or in pollinating flowers, aspects which we readily accept are crucial to our own lives. What we tend to call "Nature", (and James Lovelock refers to as "Gaia"), does not believe in single solutions to problems, or in supplying only one carrier-out-of-tasks, but goes in for a multitude of versions of the required organisms; quite simply, "safety in numbers". Keeping this complex web of organisms in balance requires in itself yet more organisms, species who appear to function as regulators of the entire system.

But the other crucial aspect of biodiversity is that its component parts must be widespread, active over as large an area as possible. An obvious example, of great relevance to PO and its lovely, and important orchards, is that we need to have a lot of bees; a few tucked away in the equivalent of a small insect zoo will simply not manage the necessary task on the required scale- and we all would suffer greatly.

One recent day spent in one of our very favourite places, the high foothills of Canigou, illustrated this word, "biodiversity", in the most wonderful and life-affirming of ways. As it happened, there was rather less activity among the birds than usual, and the marmots disdained to offer many photographic opportunities, so you might have thought that we would be rather disappointed. But it did not matter.

From the moment we stopped the van and got out, it was apparent that the wildflowers were in wonderful profusion. The regular episodes of heavy rain which have characterised the spring and summer so far have resulted in more than simply a perceptible increase in the number of biting insects; there was a carpet of wildflowers, more than we have ever known before. Much of it was yellow, like the broom, brilliant against the fresh green, and the small cistus or rock-rose, which spread everywhere.

Often I am quite happy simply to recognise the botanical family to which the flowers belong: scattered throughout was the crisp white of a small mouse-ear, and the vivid blue of a speedwell. But there were small groups of special flowers as well, including two beautiful orchids, which were new to us, illustrated below.

The uniform, dark orchid, with packed small flowers, is one of the fragrant orchids - not, as far as I can find, endowed with an English name, and, perhaps surprisingly, the iconic flower of the Province of Jamtland In Sweden. Its Latin name is Gymnadenia nigra. The second, very beautiful species is burnt, (or burnt-tip) orchid, Neotinea ustulata. And finally, I found one lovely, single flower of the alpine aster, which has become a popular garden flower.

And with this botanical profusion went the butterflies - mostly tiny, jewel-like, dancing over the flowers, or settled on damp sand at the side of the track. I was not conscious of a great number of species (although, in any case, I find it hard to keep track of individual butterflies when hosts are flitting distractingly around me), simply of their fragile, flickering abundance. Many of them were blue, and we show some examples below:

Click on photos for larger image.

Perhaps the most spectacular of these photographs (all by Martine) shows a common flower, the valerian, and a moth: sometimes in Scotland we see one member of this brilliant family, the burnet moths, in areas where the wild mountain thyme flourishes (it was blooming here, too!). The Scottish examples are six-spot burnet moths, and I think that these Catalan examples are the same.

To provide any accurate, scientifically-valid account of the biodiversity experienced in this wonderful place on this glorious day, we should, of course, have done a meticulous survey, counting species in grid squares, or on specified transects, but of course, we did nothing of the kind. We stopped and marvelled, took some photos, and strolled on, our hearts delighted by the beauty of the occasion.

As an important foot-note, I should add, as I have before, one significant point. The wonderful diversity of this area is enhanced, part-created, by the inter-action between man - or in this case, his animals, the grazing flocks of sheep, cattle and horses which frequent these high pastures - and Nature. Without the grazing, the hillside would clearly revert to scrub woodland and bracken, which would be very different, and significantly less varied. Many bio-diverse habitats, like traditional hay-meadows or coppice woodlands, owe their richness to this interaction. However often we may feel the opposite, our species certainly had, in the past, the ability to work with nature, not to destroy it as now so often happens right across the planet.

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