A few pictures of chiffchaffs

... le pouillot véloce, phylloscopus collybita, out of the 49 or so taken out of the spare bedroom window on 11th October as they chased flies on the house wall in the sunshine. In between times they were going "chiff-chaff".

This is my favourite.

How long are those primaries?

At rather a strange angle

Got one!

Look! It's a really nice one!

A nice view of those primaries

How to look cute

I got one as well!

Cute and primaries! What more could one ask for?

Small greenish yellow warbler, dark streak through eye, pale streak above and below,  dark legs, short wings... check. Er - rather a long beak, flattish head - is this one a willow warbler?

'Oo're you lookin' at? Hey, there's a hom sap over there with a camera!

Of naked ladies in ditches... & mixed tits in bushes...

Yes...
appearing in your local ditches now are naked ladies.
Naked Ladies, Meadow Saffron or Autumn Crocus [Colchicum autumnale] Colchique d'Automne is in flower...
it might have been beaten down a bit by the rain of the past few days, but more will spring up.
The Naked Ladies are particularly noticeable in the ditches that have just been mown....
where their almost fluorescent pink shows them off wonderfully.
They are not to be confused with  Autumn Crocus [Crocus nudiflorus],  which is a garden escape...
but now naturalised in the UK and some parts of Europe.
Nor with Crocus sativus, commonly known as the Saffron crocus, which is also a late bloomer.

A Naked Lady

Naked Ladies

And more Meadow Saffron....

In the Spring, look out for their weird fruits....
well, not exactly weird, but they do look strange!!
The bulb sends up a shoot with three leaves encasing a green, somewhat egg-shaped seed head.
The first time I saw this it took me quite a while to identify...
well, books on flowers tend to only show the flower and has seeds only if they differentiate between species that look similar when in flower....
as if you are likely going back there at the right time.

Marjorie Blamey has illustrated the fruit in the "Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe" Fitter, Fitter & Blamey....
but it isn't quite how it looks in the wild...
the seed head is far too thin....
the leaves are too wide and too short
and there is no indicator of scale....
it has been tucked at the bottom of the opposite page....
both in my '74 edition and the new 1997 edition [we have the French version]...
so no help there, then.

Keeble-Martin shows a single leaf which is much more indicative of what you see...
but not the seed head or the structure of the three leaves and seed head on a single stem...
and it is very large when you see it....
about three times as large as would be indicated by the Naked Lady herself.

Roger Philips in "Wild Flowers of the British Isles" shows the seed head and the leaves...
very long and strap-like...
but the very thin seed-head looks like a young specimen....
but it is rare in the UK...
occurring most in the Bristol area....
so difficult to justify picking more than one to photograph.

These pictures are not mine.... I can't find mine... they are Creative Commons stock...
and are by Hermann Falkner and were taken in Austria in 2008.

A nice, rounded seedhead in Mid-May 2008

The open seedhead and withered leaves in July 2008
This picture shows the long, strap-like leaves....
almost 30cms long.

So, now to mixed tits...
and warblers...
There is a lot of activity at the moment with flocks of warblers on migration...
and they tend to interact with the flocks of mixed tits...
in our case Blue and Great...
with the occasional party of Long-Tails thrown in for good measure...
At the moment the warblers are mainly Willow-Chiffs with some Garden and possibly Melodious, too.
Last week it was Whitethroats and Blackcaps with the Willow-Chiffs....
Pauline also saw a Firecrest amongst those...
next week it could be them again...
they do tend to pass in waves.

All the birds move around very, very rapidly...
but seem to ignore us humans, so it is not difficult to get close enough to watch them without binoculars....
necessary because it is virtually impossible to follow them with the binos...
they are flycatching....
the food for their migratory flights...
so you can be panning with one and it will vanish from view...
with the naked eye, you would have seen that as you were panning....
it either dropped or flew vertically...
plucking an insect out of mid-air.
Their aerobatics are well worth "wasting" half-an-hour over...
free entertainment on your doorstep!!

Chiffchaff.... an "oil painting" done in Photoshop

Willow-Chiff is the "collective" name for Willow Warblers and ChiffChaffs....
almost impossible to tell apart except in the hand...
unless...
you hear them sing!!

Chiffchaff cabaret

For the last fortnight we have been entertained by a quartet of athletic chiffchaffs (phylloscopus collybita, pouillot véloce). The combination of soggy ground and (relatively) warm days has resulted in swarms of flies and other small insects rising from the grassland. Numbers of these find their way onto the wall of our kitchen, lounge and bedrooms, which faces northwest. The chiffchaffs spend the day target-spotting from perches in the cherry tree and the smaller trees that line the bank of the bief.

I've got my eye on you

They snatch insects out of the air, or rootle in the window boxes, or hop along the window sills, or hover at the top of the window, or even smash-and-grab flies from the glass with a loud thump. They show no fear of us. Several times one or other of us has come face to face with a small rotund olive-and-green bird, about a foot away, separated only by the double glazing. They are fast movers, but Tim managed to get some nice pictures.

who's got short primary projections then

Chiffchaffs are resident in this part of France, which probably means that "our" summer singing birds are now in Spain or North Africa, and "our" winter gang of athletes spent the summer in the forests of Scandinavia. They may be a group of siblings from this year's brood. They are certainly extremely fit and successful hunters.

The short tips to the primary wing feathers and dark legs distinguish a chiffchaff from its close relative, the willow warbler (phylloscopus trochilus, pouillot fitis), but the real distinction is its song. The chiffchaff goes "chiff-chaff chiff-chiff-chaff" and the willow warbler gives a monotonous descending "twee twee tweedle". The willow warbler is strictly a summer visitor to western Europe, and I've never heard one in the Aigronne valley. Ornithologist Tim Dixon tells of a bird ringing exercise near York in which a small olive-and-green warbler was definitely identified in the hand as a willow warbler. When released, it flew away singing "chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff"...

More of a flutter than a twitter... but a few tweets included!

And I don't mean a gamble, either...

The beginning of the end of October and there are still plenty of butterflies around...
Yesterday I saw dozens of Speckled Woods [Pararge aegeria] Tircis as I walked around the meadow to assess this Winter's tree and land work...

There is an ant trying to hitch a lift here... or else he's practising his scales!!

also, in the potager area we still have appreciable numbers of Clouded Yellows and a few Peacocks, Red Admirals and the odd Map...

Clouded Yellow... they never stay still!!

and on the 15th an utterly mad Humming-bird Hawkmoth working the Gaura flowers in the front bed...
in the teeming rain!!
Needed its antennae checking, that one!!

The Chiffchaffs are still here in good numbers...
I saw the first of the seasons Great White Egrets in the long field on the left as I drove from Grand Pressigny towards Abilly...
and Pauline saw a Crane [Grus grus] Grue Cendre yesterday...
just the one trumpeting away... and flying North East...
must have taken off early that morning, got so far...
and then realised that everyone else had stayed put at the previous nights stopover!!
The Black Redstarts are still around and the Robins are back!

A bit of Eperon de Murat news...
Pauline and I went to Ferrière-Larçon on Thursday evening to see what the new plans for the site were...
it was a presentation by the Conservatoire du Patrimoine Naturel de la Région Centre.

Hopefully...
a walkway from the road to the Murat farm to the main fields of the site itself...
and a pathway round...
the mayor, Gérard Henault, bemoaned the current main access that requires people to be "below 30 years old and have alpiniste skills"...
and the fact that he is getting no help at all on purchasing the farm itself...
the intention being to turn it into an interpretive centre, housing permanent and occasional displays as well as providing shelter for visitors in inclement weather.
Then, a couple of people in the audience {owners of Murat?} started arguing about the size of the plaque [about a foot square, apparently]...
and I was reminded of a meeting long ago when a committee I was involved with spent three hours discussing the first item on the agenda...
of vital importance, of course...
the colour of the cover of the college diary!!
[If I'd been the chair that would have gone to a sub-committee!!!!]

And then comments were made about the size of the car park...
if it was for more than two cars it was going to be too big!!
"We don't actually want people to visit"... was the opinion of the very vocal minority...
the same couple who were concerned that a foot square sign was going to be too big!

Actually, neither do the guardians of the site want too many visitors...
understandable, considering the rare plants & insects and the ancient fortifications...
so they are intending to install infra-red footfall counters in a couple of places...
it was also pointed out that it is about a kilometre from the proposed car park to the site itself...
many people will satisfy themselves with any display that may be at the farm and drive on, mentally ticking it off as "visited".

There are too many trees now on the site... especially the junipers... mainly there through neglect / lack of management and the current sheep are too selective [read fussy] and are not munching them properly...
they really ought to use Scottish Black Faced sheep...
not as fussy, about the only thing they won't eat is Nardus stricta [Mattgrass] which is too siliceous for even them...
the Wildlife Trusts use these for their "Flying Flocks"...
as do the LPO [who advertise their excess for sale at the back of L'Oiseaux magazine...
along with their excess Highland cattle! 
I'm tempted by the latter for here... 
only tempted mind!]

So these, along with the trees that have rooted into the defensive wall [vallum] and are slowly destroying that, must be controlled with more vigour!!
Major snag here...
removing the trees on the vallum will lead to erosion of the unprotected wall....
so a long roof will need to be constructed until other vegetation establishes...
don't hold your breath on that one...
apart from the obvious cost...
the example shown [from elsewhere] met with assorted gasps and disapproving grunts!!
It did look ugly... like a poorly built wood store!!

The two speakers were very poor, though...
the first swallowing the latter half of most of her sentences...
and the other spoke at the computer screen all the time!
Fortunately, monsieur le Maire often sub-titled what was being said by his comments!!

More interesting and understandable was the PowerPoint presentation... including two aerial views of the site...
one from 1950 showing all the little fields and very few trees...

Look at all the very little fields in the top right corner...
and the vallum is already marked by a tree line...
the smaller wall [muraille] is just visible as a faint line almost the same distance from the main wall...
as the main wall is from the tip.

and one from 1970 showing one vast field over all but the tip of the protected area!!

So we watch with interest....
whilst I can still manage to scramble up from the stile at the bottom, Pauline cannot...
so effectively is barred from the barré!!

Spring is on its way part II

The chiffchaff (phylloscopus collybita Poillot véloce) is definitely here - I heard it singing. A pair of them is working hard at the flies over the millstream. The sound of someone rubbing steel ball bearings together alerts us to the return of our male black redstart (rougequeue noir) in his favourite lookout point on the roof of the grange. There are up to three pairs of greenfinches visiting our feeders, mainly engaged in clearing up the spilled grains kicked out by the smaller and more agile birds. Some of the sunflower seeds are so solid they defeat even the greenfinches, which are almost twice as big as the siskins and much heavier in the beak. The tits seem to be spending more time fighting than feeding, and are outnumbered at the feeders by the finches.

The dog violets at the foot of the longère wall are in full flower, as are the miniature tête à tête daffodils. Cowslips are coming out here and there, and at les Hautes Thurinières the almond is in flower and plum blossom is on its way out.

Almond blossom

Today though, the wind has swung round to the south and it's started to rain (much needed, alas). Today and tomorrow there are carnivals, fêtes foraines and vide-greniers associated with the beginning of Lent - we visited one at Charnizay this morning, and the famous Manthelan carnival, in its 122nd year, is this weekend too. Those nasty weather gods are at it again!

Summer visitor

Yesterday evening a small, yellowish bird with a black face showed up, flycatching over the bief.... this is the picture I managed to grab of the face...

Black around the face...

Obvious eye-stripe!

Couldn't figure out what it was, the light was a golden evening sunlight... that coloured everything!
Managed to get another picture that showed more of the bird... and the jizz [way it behaved and looked] said Warbler!

Probably a Willowchiff.... which is birdspeak for "Willow Warbler or Chiffchaff" as these two are so similar, it is usually only when you hear them sing you know the difference....




Then, this morning it was outside the door, flycatching again... but had lost last nights black face... it was a Chiffchaff [probably - they are usually the first to return...] and then later there were two of them flitting about... and only twenty days to Summer time!

Dark legs....Chiffchaff! Probably?

Birds about

Pauline went into the old kitchen this morning to find a Wren [Troglodyte mignon] Troglodytes troglodytes trapped in the room. Whether this was the same wren Tim found shut into the laiterie last week we don't know, but her method of trying to escape was the same - fly into the window glass as hard as you can with a loud bang, fall back, return to the far side of the room and repeat. We assume she got in via the chimney - the temperature fell to minus 2 last night and she will have been looking for a cosy spot to roost. She left apparently none the worse.

Tim spotted a Goldcrest [Roitelet huppe ] Regulus regulus and some small green warblers (probably Chiffchaff [Pouillot veloce] Phylloscopus collybita) in the cherry tree this morning, along with the resident goldfinches, great tits and blue tits. There is also a small grey-brown warbler which is much harder to see and we have not yet identified it. The ordinary mixed wild bird food in the feeder and Tim's home-made fat block are going down well, but the warblers are also flycatching in the sunshine.

Our local Crows [Corneilles noires ]Corvus corone corone have some confusing calls - we heard imitation raven grunts and what sounded uncommonly like common cranes this afternoon, but it was only the crows taking the mick.