Orchids, butterflies and more in the Upper Aude Valley - Part 2

I didn't see this butterfly, but Keith did and this is his photo. It's a Provence Orange Tip (Anthocharis euphenoides), though I think he may have taken the shot at the morning location. I also forgot to mention that we saw Swallowtails and Scarce Swallowtails on the plateau as well.

Photo credit: Keith Allen

After lunch we set off about 20 minutes away to a place where Ian had discovered a field with Conical Orchids (Orchis conica/Neotinea conica), which are less common than many orchids. The habitat here was a grazed field that had had cows in it until fairly recently, so the grass was quite short.

After a bit of time we realised there were other orchids in this field and also Cowslips (Primula veris) - in fact we had gone past hundreds of Cowslips on the verges on our way here - really pretty! The two blue flowers in the bottom left corner are Grape Hyacinths (Muscari neglectum) which are common wildflowers in the Mediterranean area in the spring. As always with my photos on Blogger, click on one to view them much larger with better image quality.

This is a Green Winged Orchid (Anacamptis morio).

Someone spotted this lovely caterpillar curled up at the base of one of the Conical Orchids - it's a Grass Eggar (Lasiocampa trifolii) moth larva.

The Tongue Orchid (Serapias lingua) is a gorgeous orchid.

This is a Woodcock Orchid (Ophrys scolopax) - one of the prettiest I've seen so far. Looks like a teddy bear to me.

Growing in close proximity to the Woodcock were these Early Spider Orchids (Ophrys sphegodes) - but which we think were crossed with the Woodcock due to the pink colouring and similarities. Another very pretty orchid.

Onto the third stop and this Wall Lizard (Podarcis muralis) (I think) and others were running around on the curbstones by the parking.

We came to this area to see lots of Early Purple Orchids (Orchis mascula), growing on very dry stony soil on a hillside. i always thought they had spotted leaves but apparently they don't all have the spots!

Our fourth and final location of the day had a different kind of habitat - lots of fresh young heather growing although it seemed like the old bushy heather had been cut back as it was really hard to walk through, crunching over the cut wood, and in one place, through a boggy place with a little stream! Along the way we spotted this lovely Western Green Lizard (Lacerta bilineata). I'd seen one back at our house in Brittany, but unfortunately one of the cats had bitten it. It was still alive so I put it in a sheltered spot and hope it survived. These are big lizards (as European lizards go) so wasn't easy to get all of it in one image!

So here's a shot of it's head and upper body. I think this is the male as it has a blue throat.

The reason for visiting this spot was to see this specific subspecies of Sombre Bee Orchid - Ophrys fusca vasconica. For some orchid scholars this is known as a separate species, but there is a lot of hoo haa in the orchid world over subspecies vs. new species. Personally, I wouldn't have a clue! 😀😀😀

So that's the end of this lovely day out. I hope you enjoyed me taking you along with me!

Birding Languedoc trip to Les Coussoules, Leucate and La Palme salt pans

The season started well on the 28th March with our first Birding Languedoc outing, and we have several more booked up for this spring.

We started the morning at Les Coussoules, a strip of land with a lagoon behind and the sea in front, where the land is flat and sandy, with sparse vegetation and scrubby trees like Tamarisk here and there. It had been wet so these pools will be dry in the summer; however there are some filtration ponds surrounded by reeds so there are water birds to be found here, particularly in the spring. We were too early sadly for Reed Warblers (they get the Great Reed Warbler here too). No Bluethroats to be seen either, a shame as they were one of the target species and I still haven't seen one properly!

There's a Chiffchaff in the willow tree below; a Willow Warbler was heard too, plus several other birds associated with water, such as Water Rail and Cetti’s Warbler.

Photo credit: Keith Allen

The star of the show down here though was this magnificent Osprey! I have only seen one once before, flying over our car whilst crossing a dam over the Rhone river, with a great big fish in its talons! However that was nearly 20 years ago, so I was more than happy to see this one.

Photo credit: Keith Allen

Photo credit: Keith Allen

Another lovely surprise was this Common Redstart. The Black Redstarts are common all over France but it's many years since we saw one of these.

Photo credit: Keith Allen

Whilst around the filtration ponds we saw our first Swallows of the year, and not just them, but also House Martins, and the first Swifts! Then Sand Martins flew over too, and later in the day, Crag Martins!

Karline, our professional guide, is also a lover of reptiles and seems to easily spot lizards with her specially trained eye! I'd never even heard of this one, it's a Mediterranean species called Edwards Sand Racer (Psammodromus edwarsianus).

Photo credit: Keith Allen

By the way Keith has some new photography kit so I'm leaving the bird shooting mostly to him now, as he's using a 600mm Tamron lens with a teleconverter! He is much more steady than me and I can't cope with the weight of that kind of kit, so I'm perfectly happy with this arrangement. 😀

We then moved on to the Leucate headland, which is an area of garrigue up on some cliffs. It wasn't in our itinerary, however a rare bird had been spotted here in the week leading up to our trip, the Isabelline Wheatear. Sadly not even a twitcher in sight, let alone the bird in question. But I was in my element as I love the spring wildflowers in the garrigue, and loved spotting these gorgeous absolutely tiny narcissus! They are Narcissus dubius, a Mediterranean species that likes rocky chalky soil.

Asphodels were out in bloom too, they are really beautiful flowers.

There are many species of broom which flower throughout the spring, here's one of the early ones, although I don't know which one.

This is looking towards the Semaphore station, but what's that orange thing next to it?

Aha! It's a paraglider and there were several people enjoying the light breezy conditions over the cliffs.

What I didn't manage to capture was the paraglider as well as the group of migrating cormorants which flew towards us along the edge of the coast. Karline of course, identified them when they were just a speck in the distance! I could barely even see them at that distance! 😀

After eating our picnic lunch at La Franqui which is across the water from Les Coussoules, where we saw various other water birds in the lagoon, we moved on to the La Palme salt pans, still on the edge of the same lagoon, Etang de La Palme. Now this is a place that is often full of waders, although mostly they are pretty distant and quite hard to ID, due to their tiny size!

The following photo (taken with Keith's kit) has Dunlins and a couple of Little Stint in the foreground (shorter beaks and smaller). I can actually see better in K's photos than I could with a spotting scope!

Photo credit: Keith Allen

Karline spotted a rarer bird in amongst the little birds, a Temmincks Stint! I couldn't tell the difference, and still can't, but most of them have yellowish legs, though this one seems to have quite black ones. The two birds on the left are Kentish Plovers.

Photo credit: Keith Allen

I love this photo! This was quite a magnicient sight to see, a big group of Flamingos in flight. They are such a weird shape, all stretched out like that!💕

Photo credit: Keith Allen

The following is a list of the birds that Keith and I saw and heard (H), although the list on the BL website write up of the day shows 62 species! Some of those I didn't even see.

Les Coussoules
Green Sandpiper
Buzzard
Common Redstart
Chiffchaff
Zitting Cisticola (H)
Cetti's Warbler (H)
Sardinian Warbler (H)
Coots
Great Tit
Willow Warbler (H)
Black Kites
Water Rail (H)
Osprey
Swallows
House Martins
Cormorants
Swifts
Sand Martins
Marsh Harrier

Leucate cliffs
Sardinian Warbler
Crag Martins
Cormorants (again), migrating

Lagoon at La Franqui
Flamingos
Oystercatchers
Kentish Plovers
Slender Billed Gull
Herring Gulls

La Palme salt pans
Black-winged Stilt
Avocets
Kentish Plovers (again)
Little-ringed Plover
Shelducks
Little Stints
Temmincks Stint
Dunlins
Meadow Pipit
Flamingos (again)

This is the link to the Birding Languedoc write up with photos and bird list.

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Since my last post we have had snow one morning (!!!) and also a few lovely days where we got out and worked in the garden. I hadn't realised quite how weedy my new Nectar Bar bed had got, so I am only about a third of the way through attacking that. It's weird because my herb bed has hardly any weeds; it seems the only things that want to germinate in that clay soil are garlic chives (good!). I think I'll try sowing some coriander and dill seeds in this front bed as the soil is much lighter and it seems everything germinates!

P.S. I actually wrote all this more than a week ago, but I've been so busy this last week that I just haven't got round to posting it! Some nice weather again so I've been out pottering in the garden and getting some natural Vit D. 😀

More wildlife sightings

It seems to be lizard season here right now, but unfortunately that means they are easy prey for the cats. One of the rotters brought this beautiful large lizard indoors and dumped it there. My OH yelled at me to get my camera, and when I saw it I couldn't believe it! It measured 4 inches (10cm) from head to the base of its tail. Unfortunately it had lost its tail, not such a big problem as they grow back, but I also saw in some of the close up photos that I took that it had bite marks on it, and a bit of blood. 

Poor thing. We put it back by the steps to the garage under the Euphorbias and just have to hope for the best. It's a Western Green Lizard (Lacerta bilineata) and I've never seen one before, so really surprised to see one here. Apparently their head and body length can reach 5 inches, and up to 16 inches to the tip of the tail! The next day I saw a small one with green colouring under its head so assume it's a young one of this species. That one was OK, thankfully.

Western Green Lizard just after we put it back outside.

It didn't look very happy so I hope it survived.
I didn't want to share the better photos I took which show up the injuries behind the head.

And in other wildlife news:

Tadpoles! More excitement as I haven't seen any here for years.
I also got to test out how a polarising filter really works against reflection!

But to get to the tadpoles I had to pass the ducks on the
narrow path, so they went into frantic nervous preening mode!

Drinker Moth caterpillar (Euthrix potatoria).
I couldn't find the ID myself but I have just joined an excellent insect group
on facebook and I get IDs in minutes, the people there are that good.

Yet to get an ID but this is either a wasp, or a bee that looks like a wasp!
That's a tiny weevil in the background and this activity is all inside a tulip.

A male Orange Tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines).
They are hard to capture as they never stay still for long.

Speckled Wood butterfly (Pararge aegeria).

We went back to the Marais de Sougeal last week. By this time the water meadow has been drained although there are a few mini lakes that are permanent, and water channels, streams and ditches, so plenty of water for the water birds that stay here all year round. This time we got to walk along the new path which was no longer flooded and discovered that the hut in the distance was none other than a brand new hide! With windows that open too, shock horror! 

The birds and ducks were very distant but we did clock up yet another Lifer - two Whimbrels (Numenius phaeopus)! They are migratory waders, wintering in Africa and here they are en route to their breeding grounds in the far north. These two could end up in northern Scotland, Iceland, Scandinavia or northern Russia, who knows! 

The path to the new hide. The bank is brand new and has been planted up with shrubs and trees.
I guess eventually we won't have much of a view over the meadow except from the hide.

Rubbish photo because it was so far away but I can't see as clearly
as this through my binocs! A Whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus).

I went wandering off looking for bugs amongst the stinging nettles and comfrey that covered the bank between the meadow and the path, and found my first damselfly of the year!

Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ischnura elegans), violet form.
I believe this is an immature female.

After a while it hopped to another blade of grass.
I'm not sure what the red blob is, I wonder if it is an egg of some kind?

Then got fed up with the camera in its face and flitted off further away!

What amazes me is how grass and other plants survive being under water for a month or two then spring back and carry on growing like nothing happened. In the meadow were also many Cardamine pratensis flowers, known as Cuckoo Flower or Lady's Smock. This is one of the food plants for the larvae of Orange Tip butterflies.

A few critters seen recently

My OH discovered this little lizard without a tail indoors because one of the cats had brought it in. I thought it had lost its tail in the process but looking at some images on the web it looks like this is a tail that is already regenerating. I'm glad to say it was saved and put back outside near the steps to the garage, where there are plenty of gaps between the rocks for it to hide inside. It could be a Common Lizard or a Common Wall Lizard, but I have never delved into the different species of European lizards before!

Little lizard with a regenerating tail on my OH's hand.

And a slightly closer up view.

I was removing some weedy old compost from the tops of the large pots that contain my Oleanders which live out all year, when I moved one slightly and wondered why it was wobbling. I tilted the pot and brushed out what I thought was a stone. Oops, no, it was a tiny toad! 

I worried sick I might have crushed it as it looked a bit flat but appeared uninjured. So I took it round to the back door and went to get my camera. I had hoped it was a Midwife Toad which are only this size when mature (about 1 1/4 inches/3cm) as I know that we have them here from the bleepy noise they make every evening from about April onwards. But after a bit of research it is none other than a young Common Toad, which take quite a few years to reach full size. The way to tell the difference is that Common Toads have horizontal slits in their eyes and the Midwife Toads have vertical ones. This one came to life after I took a couple of photos so I took it back to where I found it and put it under some plants growing out of the house wall.

Very small Common Toad (Bufo bufo). Isn't that a nice Latin name? :-)

Here it is coming to life after its wee shock, and the lovely surface here is my gardening glove!

I was happy to see a Great Spotted Woodpecker on the peanuts a few days ago as it's the first one I've seen this year. They are normally quite common visitors to the bird feeders. I took these photos out of a house window as if I'd gone outside it would have flown off.

Female Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major).

The following photo is a very zoomed in picture of the moorhens' nest, where I was pleased to see that Madame is now sitting on the nest! This is really early for them so hopefully there will be a number of little black pom-poms to watch around the lake soon. You can just see her right in the middle - a black head and the top of the red beak.

Madame Moorhen sitting in her nest.

Not quite wildlife but new life. There are often sheep in the paddock across the road but they do move around to other paddocks. So when they were moved back to this one recently there were already two lambs that were of a fair size, like the one below. But a couple of days ago I was over in our orchard checking out the blossom on the fruit trees when I discovered one of the ewes with twin new born lambs!

A not so new born lamb.

Here's a tatty old ewe with two tiny lambs.

I'm surprised she let me take photos as they usually move away when they have lambs with them.
The sheep here always look really tatty by this time of year!