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High Winter Blog

18/12/2016

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By Robin Noble      Photos by Martine Howard

One week before Christmas, with sun forecast for the weekend – to be followed by cold, grey days – we decided to go to the high foothills of Canigou, which so often appear in these blogs. I was not convinced of the wisdom of this, as when we started it was still quite cloudy; in fact the mist seemed to stay around the Albères and the lower Pyrenees, but it slowly cleared above us, and the high, snowy peaks appeared wonderfully – as Martine’s photographs well show.

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As we started to climb these gentle foothills, we had, through the thinning mist, a splendidly romantic view of an undoubted golden eagle. It was circling, never flapping, and as it headed for a while in my direction it assumed a posture which made it clear that it was certainly not a buzzard; it is surprisingly easy to confuse the two, especially if there is nothing else in sight to give a clear indication of scale. I could see that it had no underwing pattern, its great wings looked as though they were pointing forward, and the truly big pinion feathers were spread and reaching high – no room for doubt!
 
Otherwise, we soon saw the large flock of alpine choughs which live up there, and there were also several flocks of partridges; they flew before we could get a proper look at them, and we always assumed that they are red-legged. Despite the varying colour shown in my bird books, they always seem to appear a brownish grey in the sunlight, and fly fairly fast.
 
There were also a few large flocks of finches; it was very hard to get much of a proper view of these, but when one bird did settle long enough for me to get a decent look, it turned out, rather to my surprise, to be a goldfinch. That need not mean that the whole flock was the same; finches elsewhere often fly in mixed flocks throughout the autumn and winter, and the same may well happen here.
 
The presence of these flocks, especially of the partridges and finches, I think, shows the benefit to the local biodiversity, of the transhumance which still brings the flocks of sheep, and the other herds up to these high, open uplands. (The ponies were still there, but the sheep and cattle were much further down.) Elsewhere, the partridges and finches are essentially birds of farmland, and I have no doubt that the cropped herbage, the grazed bushes, and regularly-placed deposits of various brands of manure replicate the farmed habitat. Our friends, the marmots, were presumably asleep far under the bleached grass.
 
Amid this brilliant, lightly snowy scene, a true glimpse of winter, I found two, isolated gentians still in bloom, their beautiful blue as bright as the sky, bringing memories of wonderful summer days spent on the heights.


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Different Directions

16/12/2016

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By Robin Noble        Photos by Martine Howard

A couple of weekends ago, we went off on a short jaunt, north into what we call “ Cathar-country “ and the Corbières. Basically, we took a reasonably direct route to Quillan, and then headed eastwards back into PO, via forests, rocky uplands, dramatic castles and autumnal vineyards – some even complete with hard-working paysans. This was against the spectacular backdrop of a snow-clad Canigou, and our purpose was to catch the last autumn colours, the deep reds, coppers, sheets of gold with splashes of yellow that inevitably attract the attention of the photographer. This we had expected, and hopped out of the van at regular intervals to try to do justice to the beauty of the unfolding scenery.
 
One day we found ourselves suddenly in a shallow valley whose drama we had not expected; there had been a wide-ranging, serious fire (in August, we later learnt), which had ripped through the wooded upland, leaving large areas of stark, black trees which made an impact on us that was not merely visual, but also, somehow, visceral and emotional. A recent fire looks horrible, but this one had a strange beauty, because it framed the small vineyards which had been saved from the blaze, presumably by the great efforts of the sapeurs-pompiers, and were that red-gold colour. Seen through the blackened branches, it reminded me of a stain-glass window – umpteen photos were duly taken.


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Such a fire does look like the end of the world, but the landscape does eventually, largely, recover. As we walked about we could see that many of the roadside bushes, the small prickly oaks and others, were sprouting vigorously from the base, which is precisely what Mediterranean vegetation does after such trauma. The relatively heavy rains of the autumn had no doubt helped the new growth to get away; it was about one foot in height. That night our landlady told us about the fire and expressed the hope that the pines might recover; that seemed unlikely to us but we did not say so! Although foresters call pine a “fire-climax” tree, the climax referred to is pretty slow. Generally, the pines themselves are killed; the heat causes the pine-cones to open and the seed to fall into the ash, which makes a nice soft bed with lots of easily-accessed minerals. Slowly the pines grow again from seed. At some stage the whole area will look quite strange with the fresh green of young pine against the old, black trunks. The greatest harm to the overall ecosystem really tends to be that the thin soil in such places is charred and easily washed away in subsequent, heavy rains (which, as mentioned, we have had this autumn), leaving it increasingly bare and rocky.
 
Our landlady did tell us that the fire had been set by a known arsonist from Perpignan, someone, obviously, with a strange and harmful relationship with our lovely countryside.

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In total contrast, we went south the next weekend, to our much-loved coastal Nature Reserve on the Empordà, where all the wetland was definitely very wet, the light brilliant, and the birds, generally, very obliging! We walked various paths, and sat in various hides, overlooking the well-populated pools. I will not attempt an overall species-count, because what really mattered was that we had excellent views of some which we have not seen so well on previous visits – not necessarily rare in themselves, but lovely just to look at.
 
There were, of course, lots of duck: the ubiquitous mallard, inevitably, but lots of the smart, diminutive teal, as well as the remarkable shoveler, shelduck and a few pochard.

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Teal
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Shoveler
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Shelduck
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Pochard
Geese, too: the greylag in some numbers, but also a few (rather weird) Egyptian geese. Martine captured a wonderful sequence of the latter; a male leaving the water to land on a tiny islet where he displayed magnificently to a female who seemed duly impressed:

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We saw birds of all sizes, ranging from the tiny, blithe dabchicks, one of which we were able to follow as it swam underwater among the weeds, through cormorants (drying their wings in the sun) with grey herons and egrets, to storks and flamingos – the latter do seem rather bad-tempered! Once again we watched a few, brisk, domestic inter-actions through the binoculars.

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Dabchick (Little grebe)
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Grey heron
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White stork
There was also a large flock of one of my favourite birds, the heraldic lapwings, which we associate so much with the British uplands whether in Northumbria or the Highlands and Islands. And, overhead, more marsh harriers than I have ever seen, a real thrill. Altogether a wonderful day.
 
It was quite a busy day, too, being a lovely Sunday with free admission. There were several serious photographers with lenses that I could not even imagine carrying, and many families. At the very least, their children were all having fun on a super day in a beautiful place; we can only hope that a few of them grow up to be enthusiastic about the natural world, and to care passionately for what is left of it.
 
Bonnes Fêtes to you all! And, whatever happens in the wider world, keep enjoying our wonderful countryside!


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    Bruce Hyde
    Isobel Mackintosh
    Lesley McLaren
    Robin Noble

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