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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!

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Saddled Sea Bream
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White Bream
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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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More Sights at Sea & in the Garden

11/7/2014

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by Robin Noble

We have been out on the sea several times now, from Argelès mainly, once from Banyuls, and one slightly more adventurous trip which is, strictly, not relevant to these blogs, as it was out of Cadaqués. These outings have confirmed what I had always thought must be the case from reading the map, and that is that we have an impressive and interesting coastline. The rock features may not include many arches, there are really no stacks and only a few caves, but the cliffs and headlands are wild and craggy, formed of metamorphic schist with "injected" and very contorted volcanic rock, and there are a number of tiny bays where you can haul a boat out, swim and have a picnic. Most of these features are hard to glimpse from the land, let alone the road, and you have to take to the water to see the best of it.

A considerable number of people explore the underwater richness of this coast from the many dive-boats, but there is also the "sentier sous-marin", a sort of underwater nature trail in a bay near Cerbère. Martine (my watery partner) reports that it seems popular and provides some quite interesting snorkelling, while not being as good as one of the stations out on the Marine Reserve. (me? I was just swimming in circles round the boat!). We reckon that on these trips (seven this month), we may have seen ten different species of fish close-to, but have not yet managed to identify them all, (including the two most attractive species, one horizontally striped, one with lovely blue fins, that swam around my feet in one of the nice swimming bays near Collioure!) We are now looking for a book which will help us identify these different fish. Other, bigger, fish are certainly about, but all we have really seen so far are substantial splashings ahead of the boat.


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Back on land, in the garden, the exotic nature of our life here (easy to take for granted after a while), was confirmed by a splendid sighting of a hoopoe in the front garden; the intricate and dramatic patterning on its folded wings was wonderful to study closely. This "front garden", like every part of our small domain, does without the immaculate, constantly watered grass which some people achieve. Ours is rough and dry, and wildflowers are allowed to go to seed, which has brought the goldfinches in lately on a number of occasions. They may not be as exotic as the hoopoe, but they are very colourful and I love their tinkling call. And now we have greenfinches apparently building a nest in one of the tall cypresses (surely this is very late?). Sardinian warblers have been having constant hysterics in the hedges between us and our neighbours, to the extent that I wonder whether that red eye indicates a bird with high blood pressure. In some contrast, the marsh tit has been demurely slipping through the bushes, although occasionally it emerges, imitating a fly-catcher as it makes a rapid sortie into the open.

Now, reluctantly, we are both returning, (fairly briefly) to Scotland, where everything will, as ever, be totally different. Vive la différence!

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Midsummer Blog (well almost!)

25/6/2014

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by Robin Noble (photography by Martine Howard)

I am writing this on an extraordinary afternoon, with the thunder rolling endlessly around Vallespir. We have had several humid days, and they have been warm, too, warmer than at the same time last year, fairly hot, most people seem to agree, for around Midsummer. It will be interesting to see how July and August work out!

We recently made one visit back to the Etang: the flamingos were certainly still present in numbers, which must prove that they do breed there. Sadly, they were, as so often, on the far side and really out of range of my binoculars, so I have no idea whether they had young. Two black swans were still there, without cygnets, and we also saw a few of the wonderful great-crested grebes, a grey heron, and a few egrets. Most remarkable to us was a huge flock of coots, more than I had ever seen together anywhere, in the middle distance. Again, there was no chance to tell if they had young among their numbers. It all goes to reinforce our view that this Etang (and the many others in the Roussillon) form a very important part of the natural landscape which surrounds us. And on the way into the hide, I had a quick, but perfect view of the red-eyed Sardinian Warbler, of which I knew nothing at all before I saw Isobel’s lovely photo.

When we have felt it too hot and humid on land, we have taken to the sea, which has been delightful. Our wee boat ("Puffin"!), lives in our garage, and it takes little more than half an hour to tow her to the slipway at the Argelès basin. From there, chugging along at a pleasant, and ecologically friendly, speed, we reckon to reach Collioure in little over six minutes, Port Vendres in about another six, and to round the craggy rocks of Cap Béar in about 20 all told. This stretch of the coast is really best seen from the water, and although I still fail to see from where the description: "Cote Vermeille" really derives, it is a handsome piece of coastline, with splendidly contorted crags of metamorphic rock.

Recently, we ventured as far as the Marine Nature Reserve south of Banyuls. You are not meant to anchor casually in this clearly-demarcated stretch of water, but there is, at this time of year at least, adequate provision in the form of substantial buoys to which you can attach your boat. We were fortunate to arrive at a relatively quiet time, and managed to take possession of a buoy which was quite close in to the rocks, beneath a magnificent, jagged, overhanging cliff. When we arrived, the sea was quiet and inviting, not quite the ultimate "glassy calm", but silken-smooth.

I love being in the water, but want to stay firmly on the surface, whereas Martine, on the other hand, must actually really be part fish, and loves being under it, for as long as possible. So I swam around for a while, rejoicing in the clean coolness of the water, then returned to the boat, and watched the sea idly as I dried off in the sun. Looking over the side, the first thing to strike me here is always the clarity of the water, in itself a real achievement when you consider that there is a significant human population on this stretch of coast. A few fish were obviously enjoying the shade cast by the boat: they were a medium grey, tinged with a slight yellow when in the sunlight, with a pronounced black and white patch back by the tail. Their young, paler but with the black and white equally pronounced, had been swimming inquisitively around my legs a few days before, when I stood in a lovely small bay just around Cap Béar. Reference to a colour chart we had recently bought made us decide that these are probably the Saddled Seabream (oblada melanura).

Martine, meanwhile, had been snorkelling around the rocks, and had been having a wonderful time. She had been trying out a small underwater camera, and playing games of hide-and-seek with (other!) fish around the rocks and in the weedy gullies, trying to take pictures of them. She said it was quite difficult, as she was trying to look through her mask, through a tiny viewfinder, at little fish that were scooting about! Only later, on the computer, could we really assess the results, and a few of them follow this blog, along with attempted identification where we are sure of it. All told, that day we had a wonderful time at sea, but more importantly it is clear that there is, out there, an underwater landscape of some richness, and - most important of all - it is being well looked after.

Creatures of the Deep - Pyrenees Marine Reserve - Banyuls
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