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Ambitions Realised

19/9/2019

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By Robin Noble     Photos by Martine Noble

We had long thought of spending a night up at the Batere, and this September we achieved it. It must be admitted, however, that it did not all go according to plan. We had been a little worried about flies, and had chosen what was expected to be a breezy night; there were, indeed, few flies, but there was a strong, cold wind all through the hours of darkness. It so happened, too, that the cows had decided to take up residence close to the best place for parking the old campervan; their bells may be evocative during the day and in the distance, but when you are trying to sleep and they are close by, they sound rather less poetic … and one cow, standing very close to us (despite being moved on a couple of times), was into heavy breathing. So, we did not sleep that well, but it was nice to wake up and see the sun steal over Vallespir; a nice, peaceful morning ...

For a short while. Fortunately, we were up and dressed before les chasseurs arrived. We had not thought of them, but it was, after all, mid-September and a Sunday morning. They were quite pleasant and indicated that if we aimed to go higher up the gentle hills, we could come to no harm; they were going to be in the dense wood and shrubland below the road. That indeed turned out to be true, and I have to say we were most impressed by the safety measures they put in place. Notices were placed, orange vests worn by everyone, and observers with walkie-talkies posted at regular intervals along the track to the tower, which is where most visitors would venture. There were a few higher up, too, as we discovered, as we walked up our usual route towards the col between the rounded summits.

Once round the corner, into what we think of as “marmot-land”, there was no noise, and we began to relax. There were some marmots to be seen, one presumably rather old, with a white muzzle, but they were generally wary and offered no great photo-opportunities. We did wonder what exactly they were getting to eat, as all the grass was brown and dead, cropped short. The whole place was drier than we had ever seen it, and, in addition, there were far more sheep. Given how readily sheep die, it was a surprise only to see one vulture during the entire day.

Realising the other ambition was a matter of pure luck. Neither of us was feeling that great, but when the forecast was for another hot day with calm seas, we summoned up the energy to get out in the boat. We are so glad we did. There were countless fish on the Marine Reserve; around the rocks, curtains of bream hanging almost motionless, and the densest masses of salema (rather as you imagine shoals of herring used to be) we have ever seen.
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Later in the day we headed down to our lovely Spanish beach, and in its shallow lagoon, Martine found a group of a bream we had not seen before. These were striped bream.
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On land, when I ventured ashore, the last of the ethereal sea daffodils was still in bloom.

After a while, the sun largely disappeared in high cloud, and we decided that if we aimed to head back northwards, a bit out from the coast, then we might stay in its gentle light. This we did, and while still in Spanish waters, we noticed something moving, occasionally splashing well ahead of us. So we speeded up, and headed in that direction, to find that we had met a small group, (maybe eight or nine individuals), of dolphins. They were, very firmly, heading south, not in a greatly playful mood, so only very occasionally and quickly breaching. Mostly, we just saw part of the back, and the fin, but had good views of these, and eventually, one or two passable photographs.
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Our estimate is that they were maybe six to eight feet in length, perhaps more, and we never saw any colour – just a dark, wet, grey.

We only have a couple of books from which to judge, by the shape of the fin, which species they might be, and it is not easy to decide, but, on balance, we think they were bottle-nosed dolphins. There was certainly no apparent light colouring on their sides, which characterises the common or striped, which are the other likely candidates. But, in a way, it was not the ID that mattered.

Here, in the Mediterranean sunshine, off our wonderful coast, we had met a group of fellow inhabitants of this planet. They were strong, sturdy, aware of us and unworried, intent on their own lives and requirements, deserving of respect … how better could you end a day at sea?
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Revised Impressions and a "new" flower

17/9/2019

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By Robin Noble     Photos by Martine Noble

Back for September, and back to the usual routine; taking to the sea when it is hot and humid, and we get tired of applying insect repellent!

With a coast where you can really only head north or south, and where we usually launch in one of two places, there inevitably comes a feeling of routine – you head this way or that – but the weather and the water conditions change constantly, so each day is different. And we are still finding new, tiny, rocky coves where you can land if the sea is right, and explore the small, stony beaches under the great cliffs. There seem to be more boats on the water, so we don’t always get to anchor in our favourite locations, but this season we succeeded in landing in one such place, behind a small rocky islet, under the huge black cliffs towards Port Bou.

We had passed this way in July and felt that the cliffs were significantly quieter than previously, but this latest time it was very different. We anchored in our usual spot, and as I swam slowly out past the little islet, rising on the gentle swell, enjoying the silken coolness of the sea, in the air above me all was hectic, noise and rush, as groups of swifts volleyed out from the high rocks. Squadrons of them were flying in all directions, screaming as they went, hurtling out over the sea. As before, there did appear to be two sizes of bird, and they flew differently too, one noticeably more rapidly than the other. We deduced, therefore, that we were again watching the “ordinary” swifts, which we also see in the heart of the old towns, and the alpine swifts, which are significantly larger. The latter have white patches on their fronts, but when seen from below, silhouetted against the brilliant sun, this was not easily spied. We estimated, terribly roughly, that we might be seeing two-hundred-and-fifty birds, but it was hardly more than a guess … and a magnificent spectacle!

Martine, as ever, has been energetically photographing fish, and has managed pictures of three species which we don’t see often: these have included the striped red mullet, the axillary wrasse, and what might be some kind of cornetfish.
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Striped red mullet
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Axillary wrasse
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Rainbow wrasse
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Young cornetfish?
On the calmest days, we get quite far into Spanish waters, and go to a favourite large bay with a number of sandy beaches. The best of these is fronted by a shallow lagoon, while, between the sand and the rocks behind it, is a smallish area of what I suppose we might call “bents”; rough grasses like marram growing out of the sand, with some thistle-type plants and patches of succulents. Scattered among them, were the lovely white blossoms of Pancratium maritimum or sea daffodil (the Catalan name is lliri de mar). I read that this is native to the Canary Islands, around the Mediterranean, and through to the Black Sea, so it has a truly exotic appeal to folk who lived for decades in the furthest North of Scotland! It is vulnerable, of course, to trampling by folk approaching the beach, and such places are, all-too-often, developed for tourism, so it is quite a privilege to see it blooming well.
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I am fairly certain that it also grows between our own local Etang and the sea, just north of the Fishermen’s Huts we often refer to. On a recent visit there, we headed in this direction for the first time, looking for a second hide which is marked on the large map beside the Information Cabin. We did not find it (turns out it was burnt down some years ago!), but we did see some old leaves and large seed-heads which look to me as if they, too, must be the beautiful sea daffodil.

On this occasion, there were more flamingos on the Etang than we had ever seen before. We wanted the perfect photo of Canigou with its first delicate snows of the autumn, seen between the markedly pink flamingos but, sadly, they refused to co-operate! We did also see one very emphatic crested lark, a handsome male kestrel and, slightly to my surprise, a lone curlew. And from the one remaining hide, we could see biggish, handsome, silver fish, moving in a series of leaps, something which, again, we had not seen here before; we think they were sea bass.

There is nearly always something new!
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From the Garden to the Sea

23/7/2019

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By Robin Noble

If you are permitted to count as "garden birds" those you can see in the sky above the home patch, we are slowly amassing an impressive list of raptors; the latest, observed clearly from the terrace in front of the house, has been a circling griffon vulture, which joins the golden and short-toed eagles, buzzards, sparrow-hawks and kestrels so far observed. Not bad for a suburban garden in the well-populated Vallespir!
 
Like most of the houses here, we have thick hedges and lots of bushes in the said garden; very slowly, over the years, I have observed a few of the creatures (other than birds) we share it with. I have suspected for a few years that among those was at least one hedgehog, and again this year have observed droppings which suggested that somewhere in all the undergrowth lurked one of our prickly friends. Sadly, as is so often the case, it proved me right by venturing out through our gate and being run over by a car…
 
We have fled to the open sea on several occasions in order to avoid the heat which has so suddenly hit us this year. Here, as ever, our observations are not scientifically precise, but we are sure of some general trends. One comment has to be that the Marine Reserve off Banyuls is having a clear and beneficial effect on fish numbers, both in the protected area and elsewhere. It used to be the case that while we saw a number of fish of different species there, there was almost nothing to be seen in some of the other attractive coves beneath the great cliffs, where we anchor and swim regularly. Now, almost everywhere, the friendly saddled bream soon gather beneath our modest craft, and we are seeing more, and bigger fish on the Reserve itself.
 
There are definitely rather more gulls (still modest in number and behaviour compared to the British!), and this year we have seen larger groups of Sandwich terns, some 35 in three parties on one day. They still mystify us, as we never yet have seen them fishing; when DO they feed!?
 
And another bird seems to be doing well this year. Down towards Port Bou, there was always one part of the great black cliffs where swifts nested; there may be fewer of them there this year, but they are using a number of other cliffs this summer, including those under the lighthouse on Cap Béar.
 
There is always something to note and wonder over…

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Fish Identification

20/9/2017

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By Robin Noble        (Photos by Martine Howard)

Through the last four years, we have seen a lot more fish, and Martine has become more skilful in photographing them. We think, therefore, that the time has come to provide a simple, photographic blog, listing and illustrating the fish that we see regularly, and a few rarer ones. The quality of the illustrations does, inevitably, vary somewhat, but we hope that the result will be useful. (Some of these fish vary quite a lot in colour and patterning, and the two reference sources we use do differ quite markedly at times, so we cannot guarantee 100% accuracy. Click on photos to enlarge image.)

Bream Family:
Saddled Sea Bream
White Sea Bream
Two-banded Sea Bream
Sharpsnout Sea Bream
Zebra Sea Bream
Gilt-head Sea Bream
Mullet Family:
Red Mullet
Thicklip Grey Mullet
Salema
Damselfish
Blenny Family:
Tampot Blenny
Parablennius incognitus (apparently no English name) 
Parablennius sanguinolentus (ditto)
Goby Family:
Sarato’s Goby
Buchich’s Goby
Golden Goby
Wrasse Family:
Rainbow Wrasse (male illustrated here)
Rainbow Wrasse (female illustrated here)
Peacock Wrasse
Painted Comber
Big-scale Sand Smelt
In addition to these, Martine has also definitely seen Ornate Wrasse, Grouper and Barracuda, but the photos are not good enough to reproduce. (And we have, of course, also seen a few octopuses as reported in recent blogs.) There are, doubtless, other species to find, but the above list, allied with the sheer numbers seen, does at least make clear the richness of the close waters of the Mediterranean.
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Changing Shapes Under the Sea

3/9/2017

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By Robin Noble  (Photos by Martine Howard)

Our “Côte Rocheuse” has long stretches of high cliff, broken by deep bays, where many of the attractive coastal towns like Port Vendres and Collioure are situated. There are much smaller bays as well, some under the high expanses of rock, others within the larger inlets. Particularly if it is breezy, we spend a lot of time swimming around in these little, often idyllic places, and as they are fairly shallow, have come to notice the often subtle differences in the seabed.

Recently we were in exactly such a place; it is not at all deep, and provided with one or two large rocks, so few boats actually anchor there, and the seabed is relatively unscathed. Some of it is almost sandy, there are areas of small stones, and where the coastal rocks slide down into the sea, there are narrow cracks and small chasms, relatively deep and dark. Most of it is quite well “vegetated”, with large areas of low, gungy algae, and several of the white, whorled, flower-like things, which are called “peacock’s tail”. (I say “things” because I am not totally sure whether they count as plants or not!)

It was very sheltered and calm, and I was able simply to relax, enjoy my swimming, and have a good look at what was going on under the surface of the gently moving sea. There were quite a few little fish scooting around, often babies of the friendly saddled bream, which like to hang around under the hull of our boat. But, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a few, different fish, nosing between the stones; they were wrasse (I think of at least two kinds, certainly there were rainbow wrasse of both sexes), and they seemed to be concentrating on something, almost, one would say, harassing it. For a moment, I thought little of it, but then the “something” moved, and so I swam over to have a better look.

It was a small octopus, about, we think, some six inches across when its tentacles were curled into its body. It obligingly moved around a bit, and I called Martine to have a look at it; two of her photographs appear below. As it moved about, it changed colour, from a greenish-brown, fringed with palest green-to-white, to a darker speckled brown.

When we were on holiday in the Maldives, in February, we were lucky enough to observe – from a pier, looking into very clear, shallow water – a much larger octopus, which obligingly shifted around the seabed, for several minutes, in full view. Its motion could best be described as “flowing”, which it did for a few feet at a time, before pausing, almost “collecting itself”, the tentacles coming into the body, resting for a short while, then moving on. As it manoeuvred in this fashion, it changed colour too; this one went light blue round the edges as it halted. At times, our little local one was the colour of the seabed, which made following it more difficult.

Reading up about these strange creatures, we have learnt that they are considered very intelligent; there is a story that captive octopuses (the more correct plural, as the word is not Latin), have been known to leave their own tanks at night, climb into adjacent ones full of fish, eat the fish, and return to their own tank before morning. It is hard not to ascribe very human qualities to a creature capable of working out and performing this, but we should, I guess, be very careful before doing so: their brains and nervous systems are hugely different from ours. Wikipedia says that two thirds of their “neurons are to be found in the nerve cords of their arms, which show a variety of complex reflex actions which persist even when they have no input from the brain”.

Strange, too, is the fact that most octopuses only live for a period of up to five years; effectively, they breed once, and then die. This seems an extraordinary waste of all that brainpower and complex ability. We have seen a significantly larger octopus in the very same bay, so perhaps it offers ideal nursery conditions for the young.

Click on photos for larger image.
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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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A Boating Retrospect: Summer 2016

14/10/2016

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by Robin Noble   (photos by Martine Howard)

Well, October is here, the weather has changed somewhat (in fact we have just experienced a major coastal storm), and the sea is noticeably cooler although the sun is still very warm some days. Our "good ship" Puffin sits quietly in our garage, and boating is over for another year. But there are still all those photographs to sort through, to enjoy, and memories to savour.

During the course of this season we have very much got into some sort of routine during these boating days out from Banyuls: we are usually on the water before eleven, heading out to the moorings on the Marine Reserve, and hoping for a good one. We will have a quick cup of coffee onboard, and then swim until a latish lunch. Martine goes further than I do, and takes the camera, but we are both in the water for at least an hour and a half at this time of day, swimming around all the time, searching for fish.

The reason for emphasising this routine is to make it clear that any comparison we make between the early season in June, and the later in September, and between years, has some validity – and we have been very struck this year by the very noticeable differences. In September, there were simply more fish than we had ever seen before.

They divided roughly into four groups. The first, because they are small and delicate, with conspicuously forked tails, are the damselfish; there were clouds of them at times.
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Then the salema, in close-packed shoals, working over the weeds and general gunge on the sea-floor. They are really beautiful, a pale blueish colour with delicate yellow horizontal stripes, and a dot of black and yellow at the base of the fins.

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The next group is composed of the various breams, the most immediately obvious of which are the saddled bream, which tend to enjoy the shadow of the hull and hang around below the boat. I think of them as friendly and inquisitive; when I put my head under water for the first time, I will often find that I have one on each side, perhaps only a couple of feet away, and you can attract them closer.

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But there are many other bream including the gilt-head, the annular, the striped and two banded seabream and we have seen them in big groups often hanging motionless in the water beside a steep rock-face, stacked like planes at Heathrow but infinitely more numerous. Then there are the smaller ones which work over the seabed like the salema but more often singly – the wrasse and the various gobies.

There are other fish, of course, too but the above are what we have seen in considerable numbers this September. Martine's photographs and the video below give a good impression of the richness of this Marine Reserve, and may explain the fascination of this coast for us.

But all this piscatorial richness raises, not for the first time, the rather obvious ecological question: where are the avian predators? There are a few cormorants about, but pretty few, and no more than in previous years. The shearwaters and the occasional gannet mentioned in previous blogs were obviously occasional visitors, and otherwise we have seen only a couple of young sandwich terns, which could dive for fish, and some gulls which can only take things close to the surface. One day a yellow-legged gull came close to us and we watched it for quite a while; it made no effort to look for food under the water and was presumably hoping for scraps from the boats.

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Yellow legged gull

We have never had the gulls around us while we have been anchored on the Reserve, nor do they even hang around the small boats out there, which are obviously fishing. There really does seem to be what you might term an "ecological gap" here, a rich and growing marine resource, which appears free from predation from the air...

Can't wait till next year to see how the situation may develop!

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Black Spikes, Red Prowlers and Undersea Gardens

13/7/2016

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by Robin Noble     Photos by Robin Noble and Martine Howard

As I have reported before, we spend many of these hotter, humid days at sea, normally heading down the coast into Spanish waters. The cliffs are truly dramatic, almost savage, but there are several tiny, almost invisible little bays with fine shingle beaches, and, on calm days, some lovely swimming.

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Much of our time has been spent getting to know the many fish on the Marine Reserve out of Banyuls, but there are other things of interest, too.

I must confess we have spent little time on the various brown seaweeds at the foot of the cliffs, and the all-too-many black and spiny sea-urchins really worry me, but, in brilliant contrast, Martine has recently photographed some bright red starfish, on the move across the seabed. The one illustrated here seems to have got into some sort of yoga position, but is certainly a rather handsome specimen.
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While I was recently splashing around in one of our favourite little coves (which is backed by some magnificent rocks) I did observe that along the sea's edge on some of the more sheltered rocks, there some big, red beadlet sea anemones, roughly similar to those familiar from British coasts but somewhat larger. And, later, I noticed that some largish, flatter rocks, three or more feet under the surface, were pale, a sort of sandy-white in colour. The water is nearly always wonderfully clear, and I headed back to the boat to get my goggles, put my head under and get a proper view of whatever was causing this coloration. And having done that, I had to return to the boat for the little underwater camera in order to photograph it!

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I hope the result is clear enough to give a good impression of this delicate, miniature, undersea garden which I saw there, and which I found quite entrancing. On close inspection it looks like a dense collection of tiny, delicate, white parasols and, according to the invaluable book "Marine Wildlife of the Mediterranean" (which we have mentioned before), it is a seaweed which goes by the poetic name of "mermaid's  wine-glass"; the latin is less interesting perhaps- acetabularia acetabulum! The book says that it can be greenish, but what I saw was really all white, as was another seaweed around the place, again quite small, but delicate and this time "whorled" (does the word exist?) like a shell: the "peacocks's tail", padina pavonica. This I have seen growing larger and more abundantly around some Greek Isles, and it is great to be reminded of all the wonderful places within the compass of this Mediterranean Sea. We are so lucky!
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End-of-Season Blog

2/10/2015

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by Robin Noble

Well, the first snows are high on Canigou, the weather is fresher, and for us the boating season is firmly over. It has been more mixed than usual this year, weather-wise, with a lot of wind and sometimes an impressive swell to cope with. Despite that, we have had some lovely days, and ventured a little bit further along the coast, both to the north and south.

The last few days at sea gave us some nice moments, and some interesting sightings; as ever, there were gulls and cormorants, as well as a few immature terns. Once again, we concluded that these were sandwich terns, despite the fact that they look rather chunkier than most books suggest. Strange that we never seem to see the adults. With them, we again once saw an immature gannet; even in the distance, its magnificent dives made it obvious. But as we have slowly increased our awareness of the richness of the life in this sea, we remain puzzled at the lack of seabirds – there are plenty of fish for them to feed on!

What we did see, at last, were dolphins; not the fabulous, breaching-all-around-the-boat vision of my dreams, but good, repeated views of two dolphins nonetheless. They did not leap high out of the shining sea, but we could see little variation in the dark grey of their bodies, and that, allied to their size, relatively restrained behaviour, and the fact that there were only two of them, convinced us that they were common bottle-nosed dolphins, a nice sighting with which to end the season.

But Martine also added to our list of things seen underwater; this was a strange creature, which we visited twice. It was a common sea cucumber, new to us, weird and spiky. According to the invaluable "Marine Wildlife of the Mediterranean", they are found "on shallow bottoms, covered in sand and seagrass, rich in organic matter. Spawns at dusk (which this was not), during summer, when it is easily spotted in a vertical position releasing eggs or sperm".

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I shall only say that on our second visit, it had clearly performed this vital task, and had returned to its normal, probably rather unexciting, life.

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And on land, one wonderful, end-of -season view: I was working inside one dull grey day when I heard, repeatedly, the familiar call of the bee-eater – lots of them. I grabbed the binoculars and ran outside to discover that on this one occasion, the birds were all around the house, flying low, sometimes even below me, landing briefly on trees and bushes in nearby gardens. In the dull conditions, not for once blinded by the sun, I could see their glorious colouring, and admire their excited flight around me, even seeing them catch and carry bees (presumably!) in their bills. Simply wonderful!

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Cool, Wet Blog

15/7/2015

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by Robin Noble & Photos by Martine Howard

After a late and turbulent spring, we seem to have progressed very quickly to a heatwave – or at least to what we, with less than three years' experience, certainly regard as a heatwave! It does not do the garden much good; seeds and plants, which were lovingly tended through the vagaries of the spring weather, now wilt, crisp and fry – and the gardener does much the same!

The obvious solution, as I have mentioned before, is to take to the Mediterranean, and spend days both on it, and, refreshingly, in it. We have launched both at Argelès and Banyuls, and from those two centres covered quite a stretch of coast. This activity has reinforced our feeling of last year, which was that the stretch of coastline known as the Côte Vermeille, is truly one of the great glories of the Pyrénées Orientales, but really only appreciable from the water. We have ventured further south into Spanish waters this year, discovering perhaps the finest bay yet – the Platja de Garbet, south of the worryingly-named town of Colera, (where I see there is a Platja dels Morts).

On the way down there we stopped, as last year, under one of the high, black cliffs on either side of Port Bou, and marvelled again at the flight of the rock- and cave-nesting swifts as they fly out into the sun and over the water. It is a wonderful experience to be swimming in the silken waters, with screaming swifts hurtling above you. While relaxing later in the bobbing boat, staring up at the vertical cliffs, which must be at least two hundred feet high, I tried to watch individual birds carefully and estimate their wingspan, an almost impossible task as they hurtle overhead. The point was that I was convinced that I had seen white on some of the birds, which must mean that they were alpine swifts, with a wingspan of some 21 inches according to my book. Common swifts there certainly were in numbers, too, making a very fine spectacle.

Elsewhere, with a lower, more vegetated and less rocky shore, I was able to watch and contrast the more fluttery flight of sand martins as they patrolled the crest of the escarpment in search of insects. Several times this year I have confirmed my feeling that all these hirundines choose to nest in busy places, where there is lots of life around, including lots of traffic, which they do not appear to mind. This has been confirmed in Perpignan, Sorède, St. Nazaire and the main street of our own village of Le Pont (Reynes), where the calls and flight of swifts, swallows and house martins entertain you as you wait for a bus. By contrast, in our normally quiet suburb, (where it seems to me, the houses still offer adequate ledges for nesting) few birds are actually resident although plenty may be seen high overhead on a calm evening. Perhaps they do feel some real affinity with old centres of population and human activity?

We have been in the water a great deal, with Martine, of course, properly under it, me pottering along gently on the surface. The great sighting this year has been our first octopus; Martine in fact saw two, on different days, but I actually managed to view the second which was a great thrill. He (Martine promptly christened it "Oscar" so it has to be "he " – sad, I know!), was very well camouflaged, and aware of our presence but in no way suggested real alarm, just moving gently away. They have a strange, amorphous, flowing motion, visibly changing shape as they glide over and around the rocks, a characteristic which may be intended to confuse a predator.
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Oscar
Other sightings have been of fish, and we continue to be impressed by the richness of these clear waters. Martine has again been engaged in attempting underwater photography – something of a hit or miss, as it is impossible, while swimming, to see through the viewfinder. Some have, despite this, come out rather well, and a few new ones have been placed in her gallery of photos, while others accompany this text (thanks, as ever, Lesley!). We have seen, as last year, lots of saddled seabream, white and annular bream, as well as the pretty salema, (all of which are pictured here). The two peacock wrasses, the five-spotted and rainbow wrasses, painted comber, and the blue damselfish, also seen and listed by Martine, have so far eluded the camera. Lots of anchovies, too!

Picture
Saddled Sea Bream
Picture
White Bream
Picture
Salema and Bream
As for seabirds, as last year, we have only seen gulls and cormorants, apart from one hot, hazy, lazy afternoon as we made our way back to Argelès, when a young gannet, dark above and white below, followed the good ship Puffin, occasionally halting to make its vertical dive. As we know, there is plenty down there to feed it, and I remain very surprised at how few birds we have seen out on these enchanting waters.

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