Joachim breezes past

'Twas a dark and stormy night on Thursday. The weather service Météociel was forecasting winds gusting up to 125 kph and at least five centimetres of rain in twelve hours, and the following day La Nouvelle République advised us that an official tempest, named Joachim, has just happened. The wind speed meter on our weather station is broken, but the audible wind noise was considerable. As for the rainfall meter, it indicated that we had 247.5 millimetres of rain in 24 hours. That's a quarter of a metre all but, and totally out of proportion. It looks like the wind was affecting it, so we don't know exactly how much we got. Sandaysoft confirms that strong wind is a known problem with our weather station, and points us to a forum entry discussing baffles that could make it a bit more accurate.

On Thursday afternoon we watched in some anxiety as the bief rose from its normal tinkling brook to a roaring stream the colour of milky tea. Tim went down in the night to check on the water level and to close a shutter that had come unhitched. The following morning the rain continued to fall and the water continued to rise. The muskrat and the moorhen coped well with the force of the flow, crossing bravely sideways from one side to the other and finding slack water where they could make good progress under the bank.

Our water meadow.... the strip of water from lower left to top right is one of the mown paths... and the pond the other side!

At the peak, the buildings were still a good metre above the water level, as the watermeadows along the valley did their job. A "route inondée" sign near the junction to Favier indicates that the bief had burst its banks there, but water only partially covered the road and we were never cut off from the village. The worst damage we took was to the stable door, which was in a bad state to begin with and just got torn open. Our neighbour Richard evacuated his sheep from their home on the edge of his étang, carrying them by the feet upside down (rigweltered, as they say in Yorkshire) and docile, from their little shack to his trailer. We don't know where Jerry the outdoor cat was during the storm, but he turned up unconcerned on Saturday morning!
Heavy rain will drive earthworms out of the ground, and we saw several bird species taking advantage of this along the edge of the floodwater - lapwings, blackheaded gulls, crows and herons among them. A male sparrowhawk came to sit in our cherry tree, turning obligingly through 180° so we could admire him properly and take photographs.

Looking from the longere to the 'dry' bridge...

...and the view the other way.
La Forge is on the left with Bezuard behind, Moulin de Favier is in the middle and Favier is the next toward the right.
The bief was coping well with the right angle bend at the moulin!!

On our way to the Christmas Market at La Celle Guénand, we passed numerous washes of gravel and mud and one minor landslip on the road where rainwater had streamed off the fields. At Le Moulin Neuf, a big old poplar had come down, leaving a great plate of earth and roots projecting over the Aigronne. The commune had been quick to cut off projecting branches and clear the lane, but the main electricity cable was still hanging to the ground where the tree had pulled it down. Fortunately the cable still appeared to be in one piece.

The Aigronne and its watermeadows at Gatault
[Click on the photo to view full size]

Water chickens revisited

Two generations of moorhens on the millstream

Almost exactly a year ago we blogged about our resident moorhens [gallinula cloropus]. At the time we had not realised the two adults had a very young juvenile with them, probably the one we had seen as a fluffball in September. We nicknamed this youngster "yellownose" as it had not yet developed a frontal plate (the red bit) and the unadorned beak is yellow. Throughout the winter we observed Yellownose and / or its parents plodding cautiously up the bank of the millstream to the area beneath the feeders where they had learned there would be stray seeds and scraps of fat. As the adult characteristics began to develop, Yellownose grew into Pinknose and then a fully grown adult with a shiny red frontal plate, but still slightly browner than its parents. In April there was a series of fights over the territory between the bridge and the walnut tree. Pinknose won by two submissions and we assumed that it was a him when it started building a nest platform by carefully folding down the young leaves in the middle of the flag iris patch.

That shows you how little we knew about a bird we saw every day from our kitchen window. A second bird appeared, with a more prominent frontal plate. This bird always greets Pinknose by fanning out his tail - it was Pinknose that was the female. By May, Pinknose was sitting on the nest, almost completely hidden among the iris. 

Spot the moorhen

We saw the pair throughout the summer, less regularly since more cautious, with three fluffballs, and now they have a Yellownose and a Pinknose of their own. Once again, moorhens en famille are visiting our bird feeders. Every day and often at night we hear their clucking calls and panicked splashing.

Dad and Pinknose Junior

What big feet! Note the lack of a web

Youngster amid what remains of the iris

Which leads us to another odd thing - the local bird guide, Les oiseaux du bassin de la Claise tourangelle, shows both the gallinule poule-d'eau and the râle d'eau (water rail) as resident from mid-February to mid-December and absent the rest of the time. Where are they supposed to go over Christmas? It's nice to think of the moorhens of southern Touraine taking a mediterranean cruise to visit their cousins the Purple Gallinules in the s'Albufera reserve on the island of Majorca. In the far north (Siberia for instance), Moorhens do migrate to avoid a deep-frozen winter. Possibly, in our region, the ones that hold territories on the étangs will move to running water which will not freeze over in hard weather. We certainly see more pairs along the millstream at this time of year. Or possibly the authors of our local guide copied it from someone who had it from someone else that moorhens migrate...

New year, new bird

We spent the New Year in the laiterie, and actually slept there for the first time. Therefore we spent more time looking out over the millstream (bief). Great was Tim's excitement when he spotted a water rail, rallus aquaticus, râle d'eau. On a grey day too murky for a decent photo, the only thing conspicuous about this secretive bird was its long candy pink beak and legs, distinguishing it from the resident moorhens. It worked up and down the edge of the bief turning over drowned poplar leaves in search of insects and small crustaceans, swimming occasionally from one exposed mud patch to another.

This species is reported to nest in Bossay sur Claise and possibly Charnizay, but the damp meadow habitat is ideal for it and we've been hoping to see one.

Flapwings

Yesterday we realised that a small party of lapwings vanellus vanellus was working away in the young winter wheat of the field next door. According to the Word Origins website, the name "lapwing" is derived from the same roots as "leapwink", and describes the way the bird jinks and tumbles in flight. The name may also refer to its habit of trying to lure a predator away from its nest by staggering about trailing a "broken" wing.

Lapwing in the Brenne

The lapwing is known by other names. Peewit mimics its instantly recognisable call. Green Plover? well, the feathers of its back have a green sheen, and it's a member of the plover family, but what a boring name! The French name Vanneau huppé refers to the lapwing's punk hairstyle. Take all the names together and you have a crested, green-tinted plover that makes a noise like "peewit" and has a tumbling flight - that's just about right.

There were only six lapwings in our little party. One of our lasting memories of our voyages between the UK and France is of a flock of several thousand lapwings with golden plover in a field just north of Villers-Bocage, near Amiens in the wide-open spaces of the Somme département of Picardie. The pictures that follow are just a sample.


That was at the end of October 2005. Every time we passed that way, we looked out for them but never saw them again. With changes in farming methods the population is diminishing all over Europe. According to the RSPB, since 1960 lapwing numbers have decreased by 80% in England and Wales. Major declines are also reported in France, but without a baseline covering the whole country, observers are unwilling to be quite so specific. The Brenne is one of the premier sites for lapwing in winter, and that area at least is managed sympathetically for both wildlife and humankind.

A mixed flock of plovers... Green & Gold

Various flight views

More views of the mixed flock... there is a Golden Plover in flight with this group.

Late Night Wol

Nearly every night we hear a lot of Whoo-hoo-hooing from the trees outside the house. When we brave the frost we can hear that this male tawny owl [strix aluco] chouette houlotte is calling to another about a quarter of a mile away, somewhere in the woods on the hill. A single tawny owl does not go 'tu whit tu whoo' whatever Shakespeare may have said - the 'tu whit' call is the female, and the 'tu whoo' is the male. A pair may call to each other from regular positions. A male will also sing out to another male "keep orrfff moy laaand!" It is possible to call a male tawny owl quite close to you by hooting into your hands when you are on its territory - I've seen Tim do it.

This was a bird on the edge of inner-city Leeds, where railway cuttings, allotment sites and parks provide a diverse habitat for it. I'm a city gal, and I've heard tawnies in every city I've lived in. They seem to me to be more capable of coping with humanity's effect of the environment than the barn owl. A barn owl likes open rough meadow (but not too rough), with suitable old trees or "cliffs" (buildings) with holes to nest or roost in, whereas the tawny will happily hunt in a shrubby back garden and roost in a roadside tree. Barn owls also seem to be a more common road casualty than the tawny although maybe those white feathers are more visible. At the moment our meadow is too rough and the barn owl seems to have moved out of our barn. The tractor is on order, Madam, so we hope next year you'll come back!

Early Morning Wol

Today, the ERDF [EDFs installation and meter reading arm] were due to read the meter between 8AM and Midday.
So I struggled over in the dark in driving drizzle to the Laiterie to turn the lights on in the grange [barn], where the meter now is located [conveniently at the farthermost corner].
Lights turned on, all shipshape and I was about to go back into the Laiterie and the warmth and make some bread when the silence was shattered.
Much screeching outside from the direction of the hangar and I turned round towards the noise... which was getting louder.
Finally, a Little Owl [Athene noctua] Chevêche d'Athéna arrived on the top of the ill-fitting barn doors, looked directly at me, decided I wasn't worth eating, continued screeching very loudly as it flew over to the dividing wall between the working part of the barn and the stable end and settled again, looking around.
I spoke to it ... "Good morning. You are welcome!" ... and got the look that only a Little Owl can give... a very Glaswegian "Aire yu gonna storp me.. Eh? Eh?" and toddled, like an elderly lady holding her skirt up out of the mud, along the top of the wall, looking left and right.
It finally flew into a dark corner of the grenier [hay loft] over the stables.
I left it in peace and went to make some dough.
The meter reader came at Midday.... the bread looks and smells lovely.... mmmm!

Water Chicken

Every year, a pair of moorhens gallinula chloropus (gallinules poules d'eau) raises a brood of black fluffballs on our millstream. This year was no exception, and we regularly saw two adults and two well-grown young poking about among the waterweeds. Moorhens and other gallinules are very attentive parents. In Majorca we watched a Purple Gallinule the size of a turkey picking minute fragments from a reed shoot and passing them delicately to a fuzzy chick of such cartoon ugliness that only its parents could love it.

As with many territorial bird species, only a pair of moorhens now remains. This afternoon we were 'working' in the laiterie when we saw the moorhens approaching down the millstream. They reached the bank below the cherry tree and climbed carefully up the slope one behind the other through the snow to the scatter of bird food (I've given up filling the feeder! It all ends up on the ground in a few hours). They spent about five minutes picking up this and that among the great tits and chaffinches. Then they retreated down the bank again and set off downstream once more.

I'm A. Partridge (a-ha)

The collective noun for a group of partridges is a "covey". This word has associations of secretive operations, like "covert" and "cover". We encountered eight red-legged partridges (alectoris rufa) perdrix rouge on our sand pile in our hangar right at the start of the hunting season. 

 These have to be some of the least covert operators I have encountered since cycling into a flock of young pheasants (poults) somewhere on the Yorkshire Wolds many years ago. At least fifty poults were milling about in the road outside their comfy pens from which they had clearly escaped, with no idea what to do next.

Partridges taking on grinders.

 The partridges had at least some idea what they wanted - to take on the grit which is necessary for them to crush hard seeds in their gizzards for ease of digestion. They showed little fear of us, enabling us to photograph them and observe their leg rings. With great dignity, they walked off in procession past the hangar, flipped up onto the fence, scuttled across the road and disappeared into the maize field. 

Line dancing covey... perhaps?

 According to one of our books, red-legged partridge "only fly if pressed". Well, I'm darned if I can see where you have to press to make them fly. Somehow I don't think they were raised in the wild by Mummy and Daddy Partridge.
There are wild partridge about though, or at least released birds from a previous season - we heard their 'starting a recalcitrant chainsaw' calls all summer, and a single male - nicknamed 'Alan' - has visited us on several occasions.

Alan

He accompanied Tim collecting walnuts and 'helped' by pecking at the ground wherever Tim disturbed fallen walnut leaves. When the shooting started, he flew into our front yard (pressed!) and ran at the barn doors where there is a poult-sized hole he clearly remembered well. Unfortunately it is not a full-sized-adult-partridge hole and he bounced off the doors backwards like a Roadrunner cartoon.

Alan cookin' on gas!!! Look carefully at the leg he's standing on and you can see the ring.

 The hunting season for perdrix in Indre et Loire is from 19th September to 21st November. All eight of our gormless covey appeared last week in the field opposite the house, right next to the road, so they're all safe. We've seen Alan again too. I'm rather pleased to see them as I feel they're "ours". On the other hand, a couple of plump partridge would make a tasty meal....

Just a nice brace! Tasty on a plate if they weren't so threatened!!

Worrying though that the Fédération Départmentale de la Chasse d'Indre-et-Loire (FDC37) does not distinguish the two species of partridge in its calendar. The population of the grey partridge (perdix perdix) perdrix grise is diminishing, almost as rapidly in France as it has in Britain. According to La Nouvelle République of 12th September 2010, the grey partridge population in this region is giving cause for inquiétude and there is a study in progress to find out why.

Frilly Knickers

In winter, we share our mill stream with a small water bird in frilly knickers - a little grebe or dabchick (tachybaptus ruficollis) - a grèbe castagneux. It was in its winter uniform of shades of grey, but still with a fluffy white behind. The fishing technique of this smallest of the grebes in fast flowing water seems to be to allow itself to be carried by the current from one promising spot to another, under the water much of the time. We watched it from the bedroom window as it caught a fish about 5cm long (a couple of inches in old money). This tiddler seemed to give the bird a little trouble to work it round to a head-first orientation for ease of swallowing. The grebe was last seen departing under the bridge, backwards and bobbing like a cork. No wonder we never get any work done!

Only three cranes on 1st December. Tim says they were trying to get into V formation with a great deal of debate about who was to be leader.

I filled the seed feeder that hangs in the cherry tree yesterday, to find it completely empty today. It normally lasts a little longer than that! There was a fair bit on the ground. Several possible explanations spring to mind. Firstly, we've had some rather interesting winds that caused tiny snowdrifts inside the barn. In Leeds, an enterprising wood pigeon used to stand under the feeder (which hung from a handrail) and bash it with its head to knock seed onto the ground for it to pick up - can't do that here! Most likely is the habit of the great tits - of which there are at least eight - of slinging aside anything that isn't a sunflower seed, so that they feed in a little rain of millet, corn, maize etc. The great tits and blue tits had to feed on the ground along with the robin, dunnock, chaffinches and siskins. The goldfinches preferred the teazles on the other side of the millstream. I refilled the feeder - let's see how long this one lasts!

December 2005 - Observations in Nature Diary

26th - Black Redstarts still around.

27th - Pair of Green Sandpipers feeding along the bief. Loads of Buntings / LBJs.
Lovely view of a 'pair' of Kingfishers
[one stayed around for quite a while by Richard's sluice gate  -  NO I didn't have my camera to hand!!]

28th - Went for a walk towards Petit Pressigny then up to Chevarnay and round and back.
Buzzard over the wood as we walked up, Hen Harrier quartering in fields on the other side of the valley.

Watching the sandpipers