International Vulture Day 4 September 2021

Yes I am going back a bit! I never wrote about vulture day in 2020 as it was soooo cold that morning I didn't even take any photos - this time I was better prepared with a warmer jacket and gloves but luckily it was much warmer anyway, so I was able to take photos galore! There is a vulture watching spot at the base of the mini mountain of Bugarach, the highest peak in the Corbières at 1,230m. In the past the LPO (French equivalent of RSPB) used to feed the vultures more often and you could find out when they were planning to do it, so could go along, but now for some reason or other they only do this once a year on International Vulture Day. Nonetheless, there are often vultures hanging around in this area, and so you can see them at other times. There are information boards telling you about all the different species of vulture that you may be lucky to see, although by far the most common is the Griffon Vulture. I have seen two other species of vulture elsewhere in France and in Spain, but only the Griffon on these days at Bugarach. It's not disappointing though as any vulture is worth watching, in my opinion!. The only sad thing about this place is that the feeding platform is way across a valley so is rather distant for photos - a good thing they are big birds!

First of all, when we arrived we were lucky to see these Chamois perched up on the ridge - we've never seen them before so that was a real bonus. I think for this and the vulture shots, you would be better to click on the photos and view them full size.

It seems that maybe a few vultures who are sitting around or flying around notice what is going on (i.e. a pickup truck with a load of offal) and in no time at all, others start appearing and swoop around the skies until the time when the meat is put down, then whoosh! Seeing them come into land and then start squabbling over the meat is quite a sight, all the while there are crows trying to get in there to get a morsel or two as well!

I think most of the food had gone by this time as they are looking up, maybe hoping for seconds? 😀

Griffons are large vultures, with a wingspan of 2.3–2.8 m (7.5–9.2 ft) (according to Wikipedia). And here is what they really look like in this beautiful photograph by Pierre Dalous taken from the Wikipedia page for Griffon Vultures. How I wish I could get a shot like this!



Once the birds had finished their meal they took to the skies and we continued to watch them for a while, as it is rare to see so many in the skies all at once, except for at feeding time!

Philippa (on the right) who is the owner/leader of Birding Languedoc and some of our group watching the vultures.

The day was not over as we went to a pretty picnic lake on the outskirts of the village of Bugarach to eat our picnic lunch.

Not my best dragonfly shot and I don't want to spend ages trying to ID it from just one image, so let's just say it's a Darter of some sort, and probably female.

This however is definitely my best shot of a Southern White Admiral (Limenitis reducta)! By this time we had returned to the village of Bugarach and gone for a walk into the fields up above it.

A Grayling of some sort - as there are many species of Grayling on the European mainland I can't ID it from this photo.

A view of the Pic de Bugarach - now from where we live it looks like a nicely mounded peak, but from certain angles it has a fairly jagged flattish top.

This is the first Jersey Tiger Moth (Euplagia quadripunctaria) that I have seen down here - I saw lots of them in Brittany. The small butterfly behind is a Small Heath (Coenonympha pamphilus).

Another daytime flying moth, this time it's one of the Burnet moths, possibly a Five-Spot but the markings are all merged together, so I'm not sure.

We were bird watching as well of course, but apart from a few Wheatears perching on fence posts and telegraph wires, I can't remember what else we saw! Below Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe).

Another view of the Pic de Bugarach walking back towards the village.

We then moved on to the Gorge de Galamus to see if there were any migratory birds passing through. We didn't see any, but we were lucky enough to see both a Blue Rock Thrush and a Common Rock Thrush, both in the same place! They were very distant so no photos, but a great find all the same.

I've taken photos of this gorge and the Hermitage of St Antoine before, but the last time I had sun shining through the middle of the shot. This image shows the hermitage much better, and in the next photo which is taken from the main car park, if you view it full size you will see the hermitage in the middle of the image. In this image, you can just see the steps leading up to the chapel built into the cave behind the left and middle roofs.

* We've been having horrible weather, really high winds making the already not very warm weather feel icy, whilst northern France and even the UK bask in sunshine with temps of around 21C and 19C respectively. I'm desperate to get out for a walk as all the plum and now cherry blossoms are out and lots of wildflowers! Keith is braver than me and goes out once a week for a walk no matter what, unless it is raining. I'd rather stay indoors! 😀 However Monday is our first trip out with Birding Languedoc this season, so I hope it will be less windy. Orchid season has started and I counted 21 unidentifiable Ophrys genus orchids in the front garden!

* I wrote that several days ago, so yesterday was the day we went out with our birding group! The weather was so much better and between us we have loads of photos from a very successful birding (and wildflower) day, so that will be the next post. 😀

Before and after chalk painted furniture and guest room

I think I've just about finished redecorating for this winter and now I'm going to get out and start tidying the flower and herb beds! I've been out for precisely one walk this year on a non windy, sunny day, so I'm rather itchy to get out more. I have been exercising once a week in the little gym at my physios, which I think is starting to help a teeny bit. I saw a pain doctor last week and he wants me to start doing balneotherapie (amongst a large list of other things which I doubt they do at my physios, like having mud treatment!). However, they do have a mini pool for that kind of exercise at the physios, but whether they can fit me in for 3 sessions a week I rather doubt it, as they are run off their feet and seem to be seeing multiple patients at the same time. Whatever, in the summer at least I can do those exercises at home. Yes, I still have pain, both from the mesh from the hernia repair and from an on and off over the years tendonitis problem in my thigh, which the pain doctor declared was sciatica; I don't agree but he wasn't the kind of person who listens and liked to talk and shout a lot.

This wasn't meant to be a health update, just to show some piccies of my furniture and guest room now that they are finished! So let's get on with it....

The Before of the pine chest of drawers in the guest room:

After:

I have to say I'm rather chuffed with it - the headboard and then this chest were the first pieces of furniture that I have painted with chalk paint - up to now I've just been practicing on things like picture frames, plant pots and lamp shades. I finished the painted chest in clear wax, then put dark wax in the few nooks and crannies to give an aged look. It doesn't show up so well in my phone photos indoors, but I'm sure you get the picture. 😀

Here's a picture of the wall that I painted, with the furniture mostly back in place. I'm just leaving the mattress out from the headboard until the wax is fully cured, which can take up to a month. This isn't the bed that goes with the bedhead, ours is much higher and once the pillows are in place it will be more or less hidden, but I wanted it painted. I also painted the picture frame above. That is the picture which inspired the autumnal colouring I chose in our last few bedrooms. It's of a ripe wheatfield with wild flowers including poppies in it. Actually I wish it were a bit bigger now as it looks a bit lost here, but heck, it's a guest room and I don't have to look at it every day. 😁

I also painted the lamp shades a few years ago and decorated the bases with thick sisal string. The one thing that is not going to be painted are our cherry coloured bedside tables, which we've had since we lived in London and I love them just as they are. But I think the mix of dark and painted wood looks rather nice. There is a chest at the end of the bed which I'm thinking of painting the same as the other furniture, but sanding back the lid and restaining/varnishing in a cherry wood tint.

Now we're going upstairs to my dressing room. Yes, I have my own dressing room. It was my dream, and we really don't need two guest bedrooms any more, so I chose the smallest bedroom and it was furnished with Ikea's Pax system. Pax is absolutely brilliant as they have so many different choices for the interior organisation, from glass fronted drawers, to pull out shoe racks, to pull out jewellery tray organisers. However I had an old very dark brown chest of drawers in there which came from my mum (when I say old, I mean from the 80s, not antique!!) and whilst I liked it as it was, I also wanted to paint it. I already had a few things in duck egg blue in there and that's the colour I wanted to paint it. Here's a really crappy before pic with a very blurry black cat as well.

And now:

I dry brushed over the Duck Egg with Svenska Blue, which is a very similar colour, and as I didn't have any white wax I did the same effect as with the beige chest of drawers but using Old White paint, watered down, then wiped back so it stuck into the crevices just like wax does. It's not supposed to be all neat and perfect, the look is rustic. Well, that's what I am calling it. 😀 The top didn't look right with the dry brushing though so I just repainted over in Duck Egg. All Annie Sloan Chalk Paints.

The dressing room: I have loads of clothes because my clothing size has changed so many times since having cancer and I'm not throwing anything away! I had to buy more small clothes after having bought large ones and throwing the small ones away (to charity), what with moving and all that. So now I'm banned from getting rid of any clothes anyway 😀 so I need this space!

I took some slightly better photos today, as when I took the ones above the light was too bright coming through the window to get the top without it being totally blown out. I put the light on for these ones and the paint looks a bit more like the colour that it is.

It's not 'staged' 😀 because I want the top to cure before I put the mirror and plant etc back on top, and I left it up on blocks for a few days whilst it was curing.

Spring has definitely sprung here with the wild almond blossom out all over the countryside and K reports the wood anemones are flowering down in a sheltered spot in a valley where he goes for his long walks. I have daffies flowering on the terrace and in fact have had to water all my large pots around the pool terrace as we hardly had any rain in February! I saw a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly about two weeks ago, K saw some on his walk on Sunday and I saw a little blue one in our garden a few days ago. Aaah, I do love my flutterbies and look forward to them finding my nectar bar this year. 💜

Redecorating, home grown citrus and garden birds

Hi everyone! I’ve been quiet of late as I have been down in the basement painting in my spare bedroom. I wanted to brighten up the boring cream walled room, and do something with some of the dull brown pine furniture. 

We inherited a bed head, a tall chest of drawers and a wardrobe from the previous owners, which with the addition of some of our own wooden furniture meant there was a right mix of different wood colours. I decided to start on the bed head and the chest of drawers as they were the most boring pine pieces. But first, I painted the wall behind the bed in Annie Sloan’s new wall paint in ‘Riad Terracotta’. The reason for the bright colour was because all the accessories in this room are lovely autumnal colours from our last bedroom (as we have gone for a completely different colour scheme in our new bedroom for a change).

I had ordered some lovely brass knobs for the furniture as I loathe the basic pine knobs that were on the chest of drawers. But when they arrived, I discovered something surprising. The current knobs weren’t screwed in, but had been glued in from the outside! Cue my wonderful husband to the rescue, who managed to carefully saw them off, then chisel down any remaining bits down flat, then drill holes for my new knobs. The base of the new knobs was smaller and didn’t cover all the marks from sawing the old ones off, but as I was painting the chest of drawers, it didn’t matter. However I am leaving the pine knobs on the wardrobe for now, as I don’t plan on painting that at the moment, if at all. (It has two drawers under the wardrobe part).

The wall behind the bed painted in Annie Sloan 'Riad Terracotta' wall paint: I have been using her chalk paint the last two years but the wall paint is a new product and it went on over a pale wall in three coats. The dark red wall behind the bed in our room took four coats of regular paint (Leroy Merlin's own brand wall paint, Luxens)! I have bought some new paint for the rest of the walls (light cream) but I am in no rush to paint them yet. 

The bedhead has been painted in Annie Sloan chalk paint in 'Versailles', which is a beige with a khaki hint. It was then covered in her clear wax, then distressed with dark wax in the crevices, then another coat of clear wax for added protection. You do have to spend some time buffing it all up when the wax has dried overnight, but when it has dried and cured after a few weeks, it has a lovely feel to it.

You can see some of the shine on the bedhead below, and the darker bits to imitate dirt over the years. 😀

This is two coats of 'Versailles' on the chest of drawers, but since I took this photo I have also distressed it with dark wax, but there aren't too many nooks and crannies on this chest - they are mostly on the side really. I am waxing it with Annie Sloan clear wax to protect it.

It's a good thing the bedroom is big (long and thin) because there isn't much room to move with all the drawers around, not to mention all the Moho bedding which lives in here during the winter!

The Meyer lemon has done really well this year and I am chuffed to have a harvest (especially in the middle of winter!) that I have watched from beautiful perfumed blossom being pollinated by the large dark blue Carpenter Bees, to forming little fruit, to now. There were 11 lemons - we've had one so far. I had a recipe that put grated lemon zest on top of home made veggie soup when serving and it was really good, especially with the interesting taste of Meyer lemon. They are a cross of mandarin with regular lemon, so less acidic, and just, well, different!

Bertie came through the cat flap to see what I was up to.....

... had a sniff, decided it was boring and wandered off. 😀

The stencils on the outdoor pots (see blue pot behind the lemon) have held up fine so far, after two years outside (though under cover during the first winter). I covered them in exterior grade varnish and they seem good as new. I haven’t even brought the pots under cover this winter as the Bidens is still alive so this may be saving us £$€ this summer, not to mention the work planting up! I’ve got the same geraniums in the covered patio as last winter, a bit tatty but still flowering. My potted bulbs from last year are appearing and the crocuses are starting to flower. Spring is on the way. 😁👍

The garden chairs and table were left here for us too, but the chairs are getting a bit old, and my brother went through the fabric of one when he was sitting on it - I just wish I could have seen that! 😃

Keith took some lovely photos of this Coal Tit which appeared around the bird feeders recently, along with another one, and have stayed around since. About time we had some new birds on the feeders!

Photo credit: Keith Allen

Photo credit: Keith Allen

Also this picture of a Great Tit with a sunflower seed in its mouth.

Photo credit: Keith Allen

Well, back to the painting and waxing until we get a nice (and hopefully warmer) day, then we'll get out and do something interesting outdoors. Thank goodness January is over though! 👍

 

N.B. In case you don't know, with Annie Sloan's chalk paint, you don't need to sand or prime furniture (or anything else) before painting! It sticks to just about everything, old paint, wood, metal, plastic, fabric and more. It's expensive, but it is so worth the extra expense. Here's the link to her website:  https://www.anniesloan.com/