Why do we call June 21st Midsummer’s Night? Officially, June 21st is the start of summer, the first night of summer, not the middle of summer. Everything from March 21st to now has been spring. I know the sun is at its zenith and it’s all down hill from here but, please, let’s get it right. This could reasonably be called Midyear’s Night but not Midsummer’s Night. Midsummer’s Night would be round about 6th August. I blame Shakespeare, personally, though I suppose accurate  titles such as Start of Summer Night’s Dream or Midyear Night’s Dream just wouldn’t have worked terribly well, would they? Or maybe the Druids are to blame with their sunrise and Stonehenge fixation. So, I’m going to call it Misnomer Night ‘cos it isn’t midsummer anything and it’s less clutzy than Start of Summer’s Night. Blasted poets!

Now that’s straightened out, there’s a little road on our development here in Spain that has been drawing me to it at night, simply because the street lights run up and over a hill – the Spanish are very fond of hills – in what I find to be an attractive manner. The trouble is, other than the hill and lights, there’s not a lot of content for a photograph. I went down with battered and bruised new camera and took a quick snap just as a trial line-up shot. Sure enough, decent looking road but where’s my content?

Enter Francine playing the role of Miss Nomer for Misnomer Night, needed to lean alluringly against the far left lamppost dressed as brightly as possible. OK, what I could do with is a really bright splash of colour like a startling red dress, or maybe yellow, but the nearest my cooperative Francine could dig out of the wardrobe was pink. It’s fine, perhaps a little softer and less brazen. Such was her dedication that she even staggered up and down the hill in heels a couple of times clutching the wine bottle and glass that I insisted on her using as props. This was because I’d chosen to use the old camera, sans dents, this time and unfortunately it didn’t seem quite as cooperative when it came to giving me what I was after. Francine helped out.

OK, camera more or less sorted, Miss Nomer back to holding up the lamppost and … snap.

It’s definitely a work in progress. I need to hone this. I had been hoping that the opposite streetlight might cast more light on Miss Nomer’s face. I think a little off-camera flash secreted just off set may have helped but I haven’t got one. We had a laugh though with a very rarely posed shot.

Oh, I should also point out that, on the road between Benissa and Teulada there are regularly what I would most politely describe as two or three working girls. My Miss Nomer is definitely NOT intended to resemble one of those. More of a party-goer, than just a goer. 😀

Spanish properties are frequently, maybe even usually, fitted with rejas over the windows. Rejas are a bit like decorative prison bars over windows but they are designed to keep low-life out rather than you in. The two readily accessible “ground floor” windows at Casa Libelule came complete with rejas already fitted. However, there is at least one other window, the kitchen window from which we escaped having famously locked ourselves in, that is technically, though not perhaps readily, accessible to a moderately determined person. Franco was moderately determined to get out and the subsequently summoned locksmith was moderately determined to get in .. and did so.

A neighbour’s version of Casa Libelule, having already been the target of a burglary, has had additional rejas fitted over their similarly positioned kitchen window. They’ve also had locking metal gates fitted over their lower balcony sliding doors, which was, we think, the actual point of entry. Our lower balcony is something over 2 metres above the ground but, given two low-life scum, one giving the other a leg up, it seems like a point of weakness. As we’ve already proved our kitchen window to be a point of weakness, we decided to get a quote for an additional set of rejas and gates for the balcony. Consequently, I found myself waiting in for Antonio to arrive at 3:30 PM to measure up for his metalwork.

Antonio Metalworker was pretty punctual – extremely punctual for a workman, especially a Spanish one. I was also happy to note that Antonio Metalworker, unlike Bozo Plumber, actually possessed a tape measure and, furthermore, appeared to know how to extend it and use it. He also made drawings upon which to note his measurements. I am hopeful, therefore, that our eventual gates will actually fit the balcony doors whereas our shower screen never stood a friggin’ chance of fitting our shower tray.

Antonio had no English. Combined with my extremely rudimentary Spanish – I was able to use one of the numbers I know, catorce [14, I hope], when getting into a date discussion [at least, I think it was a date discussion] – we seemed to part with some sort of agreement. Whether we both parted with a similar agreement remains to be seen.

I was now able to go out to play in the sunshine. I was still keen to try and snag the Violet Dropwings (Trithemis annulata) that I’d been after when I so deftly threw my camera ensemble to the floor a couple of days ago. Apart from anything else, I wanted to see if it really did still work. Francine and I set off for the fateful road I chosen to throw the camera down onto.

We wandered along the road beside what Jalón amusingly refers to as a river – most of the time this river does not actual flow but is a meagre collection of standing pools. It’s more of a natural storm drain for the mountains at the head of the valley, really. Anyway, we did find our quarry and I’m delighted to report that, not only did my battered and bruised camera work, but it  performed no further somersaults onto the hard surface intended more for feet and car tyres than for expensive precision equipment. Not only did we find our delightfully gaudy pink Violet Dropwings but a Blue Emperor also cooperated by hanging up in a few reeds across one of the remaining pools of water. Here they are. Aren’t nature’s colours wonderful?

Now, if I can just work out the Spanish, I may approach the Ayuntamiento [Town Hall] to see if they might consider covering all Jalon’s roads, footpaths and tracks in some form of protective foam covering.

I have always disliked neck straps on cameras. Modern neoprene straps are better but stuff swinging round my neck is essentially uncomfortable. i don ‘t even like a modest pair of binoculars doing pendulum impressions around my neck, never mind a camera body weighing in at 750g. Add to that a long lens making the whole ensemble weight 2kgs or more and a neckstrap is out of the question for me. I did used to use a wrist strap with more modest lenses attached but a couple of kilos hanging off ones wrist isn’t an appealing prospect either. Since, when hunting wildlife I habitually use a monopod, my preferred transport approach is to sling the monopod with camera and lens attached over my shoulder. I’ve been doing this quite successfully for 4-5 years.

Today my approach failed. Actually, not knowing exactly what happened, perhaps my concentration ran out. Whatever the cause, as we were wandering along a road near Jalón to go in search of dragonflies and particularly one of my gaudy favourites, the delightfully pink-coloured male Violet Dropwings (Trithemis annulata), my hand somehow contrived to part company with the monopod over my shoulder. The complete assembly: almost brand new EOS 7D mk2 (£1600) complete with 1.4X extender (£400) and Canon 300mm F4 prime L-series lens (£1200), fell off my shoulder (a height of about 5 ft) onto the road surface beneath. Arghhh!! Most definitely, an “oh shit” moment.

The first obvious problem I spotted was that the lens hood, perhaps mercifully extended, was now more oval than circular in shape. A little judicious squeezing managed to return it to its more familiar and useful circular shape.

I turned my attention to my beloved camera. The camera still switched on but, as I looked closer, I spotted the point of impact on the lower left rear corner, just near the delete button. Scratches were the least of the trouble; a couple of the camera body’s sections were not now quite the shape they should be and didn’t exactly meet precisely. I looked through the eyepiece and tried a shot. It didn’t focus, the viewfinder information telling me I was in manual focus when, in fact, the lens was switched to auto. The shutter fired … very slowly. An error message saying, “Err01 – communication error” was now about all I could get out of £3200-worth of dropped equipment. Further attempts resulted in the same error message.

We continued our short wander with a gloomy cloud hanging over my head. As you might imagine, this did not make for a relaxing time spotting dragonflies. We did eventually find our quarry, plus a couple of Epaulet Skimmers (Orthetrum chrysostigma) but I had no way of recording them.

Back chez Casa, I tried a few more tests swapping components between the damaged mk2 and my older 7D mk1, which I’d left here intentionally to avoid carrying hefty equipment on future flying visits. Amazingly, these tests seem to show that the camera still works, though I’ve yet to try all functions. The lens, including stabilizer, also seems to work properly. It’s the extender, when mounted in between them, that screws things up and is very definitely broken – it has a slight but disturbing sideways movement that should not be there.

BOTHER!

When we return, I need a trip to canon’s service centre at Elstree to get one of my lenses serviced. I may try to see if they can refurbish and check the 7D mk2 as well.

Oh, and a friend at UK DRagonflies blamed the mishap on the Violent Dropthings. Very good, I needed a laugh!

[Yes, I know, another one out of sequence.]

Just after we left Spain on our previous visit, we had just had our misplaced shower screen refitted, complete with an extra component to make it actually line up with the shower tray. Now there’s a radical idea, making the shower screen sit on top of the shower tray instead of falling short by an inch and a half [~4 cms}. While the silicon sealant was curing, we’d been using the upstairs shower over the bath.

Here we were back in Spain and keen to have showers in our own shower room. We both showered and dried ourselves off. We hung the towels out on the balcony to dry in the sunny late afternoon air. I returned to the shower room where I was dismayed to notice a small amount of water at one corner of the outside of the shower tray. As I was looking, I was even more dismayed to notice a larger and much more disturbing pool of water at the opposite outside corner of the shower tray. Bugger! Clearly there was still a problem.

I spent a partly sleepless night considering what might be wrong. Since the shower screens were now correctly positioned, I began to fear a leak from the shower tray waste. In the morning, I set about a test; I began pouring 2-litre jugs of water down the shower waste. After four such jugs of water, no further water appeared where I had noticed them. Head scratching time again. I put the shower head on the floor of the shower and turned on with the screen doors closed. I noticed no problem at first but then Francine, now an onlooker, spotted water tracking along the shower tray below and outside of the shower screen.

Time to get prostrate on the floor. I peered under the aluminium and could just about make out at least one gap in the silicon sealant beneath the aluminium. For f**k’s sake, Mr. Bozo Plumber couldn’t even seal a shower screen correctly with it in the correct position. Actually, he’d done it all wrong anyway. Accepted practice is to position the aluminium and assemble the screen first, then seal around the outside edge of the screen where it meets the shower tray. It looked as if this sealant had been put down first then the aluminium of the screen positioned on top of it. How are you supposed to know you’ve put enough sealant down when you can’t see it? Either that, or he’d attempted to seal the inside and failed.

The bill for misfitting the screens twice was still outstanding. I could have withheld payment and got the idiot back for a third attempt. However, by now I didn’t trust him to be able to find his own arse with both hands, so I set about sealing the screen correctly myself and paid the outstanding bill whilst making my feelings known.

For pity’s sake, if you want a job done correctly, do it yourself. We can finally have our showers without turning our shower room into a swimming pool.

It’s smack on 500mls/800kms to Jalón from Fanjeaux. About 480mls/770kms of that would be on autoroutes/autopistas so we reckoned it would be about an 8-hour drive. Francine set her alarm for 6:30 AM so we could be on the road at least by 8:00 AM. That should give us an arrival time of about 4:00 PM leaving time to shop for our evening meal.

You know what it’s often like with an alarm set. Come 4:00 AM we were both awake, waiting for the alarm and thinking we wouldn’t get back to sleep again. The night was over. “We could always just get up and hit the road”, I risked suggesting. Francine seemed up for it. Packing up Guillaume and securing him for 2-week stay tout seul is inevitably a somewhat noisy business – stowing the water container, disconnecting the electricity, etc. – but we had no neighbours to disturb; the only other unit on site last night was on the far side of the campsite out of earshot, unless we got really noisy. So, decision made, we carefully packed up and drove gently out of the campsite at about 6:50 AM.

Jocund day, as Shakespeare would have had it, was breaking directly in front of us as we headed east on the French autoroute towards the dawn and the Mediterranean coast of France, before turning right and south towards Spain and its autopista. [Note to self: I really must look up jocund one day to find out just what a jocund day is.] Cruise control set to 75mph/120kph (good for both French and Spanish limits), pausing only at the occasional toll booth, service areas for an occasional pee break and a single fuel stop, the 500mls passed as we guessed in 8 hours. Pulling out to pass the odd small cluster of trucks with their cruise controls set to 56mph/90kph was about as difficult as it got. What a delight driving on these roads is, even if you do have to pay the tolls. A similar length journey in the UK would give one pause. We parked in Jalon for lunch at 2:00 PM before announcing our unscheduled arrival to our friends, who welcomed us warmly.

The heat was about to increase. Although the skies has done their frequent clearing trick as we crossed the Pyrenees, just south of Barcelona we ran into heavy black skies. torrential downpours followed swiftly. There were occasional breaks of lighter grey but essentially the weather was dreadful all the way down to about 30mls/50kms above Jalón. The stormy skies were moving south towards us. As we were remembering how to drive our Spanish house and preparing for a reunion meal with our friends in the evening lightening flashed and rumbles of thunder began. Then we noticed flames and plumes of smoke rising from the hillside across the valley from us, directly behind our friends’ house. A lightening strike must’ve set the scrub aflame on the hillside.

We called our friends who in turn tried calling the authorities but contact had already been made. Shortly, a couple of fire trucks headed along the valley to the blaze, not that trucks would be able to do much near the top of a mountain. Maybe this was a precautionary move in case the fire crawled down the hillside to habitation? Then a helicopter flew by and appeared to investigate the situation from above. It settled briefly, we think to drop off some fire fighters on the ground, took off again, now with a bucket slung beneath it, flew back up the valley and shortly returned with a load of water which it dumped on a chosen part of the fire.

As I was thinking that this looked like being a long job, one ‘copter bucket at a time, two yellow fixed wing aircraft appeared on the scene and joined in the fight. They appeared to be able to carry a heavier water load. Water bombing continued for a while after I could see no more flames glowing. What they didn’t want was a re-ignition. I know this type of flying is very hazardous and watching the professionalism was fascinating and educational.

Whilst a warm welcome was good to receive, I thought setting fire to the hillside was going a bit far, though. 🙂

OK, we’ve been here at Fanjeaux on the sheep farm for 11 days. Our original plan was stay here 18 days catching up with friends, not only campsite owners Luc and Nadine but also other regular camping visitors. However, the other regular camping visitors have not materialized. Instead, they all seem to have decided en masse to visit in July when we’ll be heading back north.  Could it be that someone warned them we’d be here in June? 😀

Whatever, our first 6 days or so here were bathed in glorious sunshine and warmth/heat, depending upon your personal calorific scale. This week, however, has seen a downturn in the weather and the uncomfortable truth is that we’ve been here so often and for such periods of time that without our camping companions it’s all turned a bit samey. So, we took the decision to travel to Spain a week earlier than originally planned and have two weeks there instead of just one, leaving Guillaume in France in the hands of our camping hosts.

This week, though the weather has been less than settled, the three orages [storms] we’ve experienced have very thoughtfully been overnight. Now, I don’t really mind overnight rain; in fact, I find the thrumming/hammering of rain on Guillaume’s roof quite soothing in a cossetting kind of way. Yesterday (Thursday), which was actually quite pleasant, even if very windy, we told Nadine that we’d be heading for Spain on Saturday. That left today (Friday) for all our packing and securing of Guillaume – things such as taking down his awning.

Wouldn’t you just know it? This morning we woke to gentle rain, rain that was very English in nature. Very English in nature not only in the fact that it was less than a tropical downpour, more irritation rain than anything, but also in the way that it went on … and on … and on. We visited Limoux market in the morning and the dripping continued. We called into Bram for tonight’s supplies and still it dripped. Why today of all days? If it wanted to rain in the daytime, almost any other of our first 18 days in France would’ve been OK but today was the worst timing possible. I’d got about 12 square metres of saturated awning material to fold up and stow away, for Darwin’s sake! Today, I really could’ve done without the persistent dripping.

It did actually stop in the early afternoon and, though no blazing southern French sun emerged to dry the awning properly, it did seem to more or less dry off once the dripping had ceased, at least well enough to roll it loosely and stuff it in Guillaume’s shower tray for the duration of his abandonment.

It is my experience that meteorological events have an unerring sense of timing when it comes to screwing one up.

“You wanna pack up? I’m gonna rain.”

Just watch what happens to the wind speed and direction when you plan to start towing a caravan all the way back up France towards an appointment with a channel ferry. 😉

There are several reasons that I’ve been falling out of love with eating out in restaurants. Years ago, the chief reason was probably having to put up with some git puffing foul cigarette smoke into the air at a nearby table. Quite why anyone would consider it good value to pay through the nose for food whilst at the same time killing their nose’s senses of smell and their mouth’s sense of taste with smoke is quite beyond me but I certainly didn’t appreciate their forcing me to do it and it ruins any financial outlay. Mercifully, in a more enlightened modern world, this reason has in some cases disappeared though Spain still suffers from it.

Alternatively, somebody might still turn up with poorly controlled children. English children are notoriously poorly behaved in my admittedly Victorian view and generally quite noisy in restaurants. I see no point paying £50-£100 on a meal for two only to have the ambience utterly ruined by Satan’s Little Disciples running riot. Once again, a complete waste of money. The French, bless them, seem much better at controlling the fruits of their loins. In fact, pretty much everyone seems better than the British at controlling their offspring. [possible exception: America.] Freedom of expression is complete nonsense and has been taken much too far. freedom of anything should always be tempered by respect others. End of sermon!

Our neighbour chez nous is also a near-neighbour in Spain and is very fond of eating a menu del día in Spain for lunch. Typically, this might be, say, 15€ for three courses, including wine. Nominally that represents exceptional value. It is, of course, usually pretty straightforward food that could easily be done at home for even less but my main problem with this approach is that, frankly, we don’t want that much food at lunchtime. I’d much rather have a simple bocadillo [sandwich] at lunchtime.

Evenings would be better for a few courses but, quite apart from the fact that I have to stay sober enough to drive, I frequently come away from a restaurant feeling a little disappointed; disappointed by the fact that I’ve just spent a fair wedge of the folding stuff on food that I could’ve prepared for myself, in a fashion suited to myself, at a time that suited myself and accompanied by wine quantities that suited myself with no need to drive. We have, on occasion, found ourselves waiting in a busy restaurant in the evening almost interminably for the bill when we just wanted to pay and get back to Guillaume to collapse.

So, that’s lunchtimes and evenings dispensed with, then. 🙂

Fear not, there are exceptions to my general restaurant exclusion rule. One exception might occur when the food might be sufficiently complex for me to want to leave it to someone else, though I don’t mind a fair amount of complexity. The more likely exception these days occurs as a result of the unavailability of some ingredient that simply makes it impossible to do at home. It was this exception that led us off to Gruissan  today. Whilst I prefer not to spend 15€ on a menu del dia 3-course lunch three or four times a week, I positively jump at the chance to lash out wads of cash, in this case 70€ , on a wonderful French plateau de fruits de mer. I love seafood and it is simply almost impossible to get raw seafood fresh enough to attempt any semblance of such thing in England. Here is food that you positively must play with, much to your mother’s disgust. They are great fun and today we set off to Gruissan on the Mediterranean coast to get one.

We know the seafood shack at Gruissan from a previous visit; no airs and graces, just shared trestle tables that get loaded with spankingly fresh seafood. Our plateau consisted of a crab [cooked – don’t panic], raw oysters, raw mussels, cooked prawns and cooked whelks, all washed down with a decent bottle of white wine. Incidentally, many years ago I accidentally tried eating a live whelk and, trust me, they are much better cooked. For those not keen on any raw food, there are other cooked options, such as fish baked in a salt crust. Here is one. 😀

Ah, now the salt – yes! The colour of the water surrounding the metal fish above is, in fact, pink. Your eyes do not deceive you and I haven’t been messing with the colour balance. The pink colouration is entirely natural. This wonderful seafood shack overlooks a salt pan at Gruissan. As the intensity of the salt increases with the evaporation of the water, the remaining solution turns pink. Curious but photographically very interesting. I cannot remember quite why we used to use the phrase “sky blue pink” when I was young and I certainly never thought I’d be able to use it literally but here, I can. Again, other than using a polarizing filter to intensify the colour a little, this is entirely natural.

Francine snagged a picture of a huge mound of salt, together with a couple of folks very considerately standing by it to show the scale, that had been harvested. I’m assuming the rusty looking tractor, with what appears to be metal rear wheels, has something to do with the process but don’t quote me.

Incidentally, as we were there taking pictures after our wonderful plateau de fruits de mer, one of the guys at the restaurant came out and emptied a pan load of used salt back into the water. Great recycling!

There’s a road near here, heading south from Limoux, that we’ve been singularly remiss about investigating on all of our many visits. We set out to correct our oversight.

The first target en route after Limoux, which was smothered by a very large flea market, was Rennes-les-Bains, an attractive sounding spa town. On our approach, we drove past a fair number of people playing about in the river which flows through town from nearby springs. Being a Sunday, I thought it might be busy and that parking might be difficult but no, we got parked with no difficulty.

Heading straight for the river on our wander about town, our expectations of a well shod spa town soon evaporated. Whilst some of the river front properties, a restaurant, for example, looked well decorated and cared for, a good number of the river front was decidedly run down or, in some cases, just unfinished. Here’s a couple of example shots looking both ways along the river from a bridge. One way doesn’t look too bad, perhaps almost inviting given the colours and sunshine, but just look at the unfinished masonry off the monstrosity in the left of the second shot. Why on earth ..?

We’d have thought so much more could have been made of the place. Frankly, it looked seedy. One possible explanation occurred to us in the form of dropouts those seeking an alternative lifestyle, a number of which were wandering around in the baggy Kasbah trousers that they seem to favour. Perhaps when such folks move in, markets are affected and investment becomes pointless. Or maybe I’m just cynical.

A beer would have been a pleasant refreshment in a better environment but we decided against it and moved on in search of Arques and some nearby red earth that we’d seen mention of. We found it. Now, here’s a thing. I favour brown-tinted sunglasses as opposed to those nasty smoke-grey-tinted jobs. The former seem to enhance colours whereas grey flattens them and makes the world look a generally duller place. There is a potential problem with the former, however. We rounded a corner to be confronting by gobsmackingly red earth. Pull over and remove sunglasses to take a photo. Wait a minute, where did the gobsmacking red go? Sunglasses back on. Ah, there it is! The brown-tint has a similar effect to putting an 81C/D/E – you pick the strength – warm up filter on your camera. In these days of digital post-processing, such filters are almost a thing of the past, forcing you to do it Photoshop/Lightroom/your chosen digital darkroom. Anyway, here’s a shot from Francine, somewhat post-processed.

We did find a small village called Serres with an appealing river front complete with shady picnic tables for lunch. We skipped the beer, though there was a bar across the road, mainly because we thought it might be more interested in serving Sunday lunch as opposed to just a couple of drinks. As a bonus for yours truly, the river was supporting a decent population of dragonflies, including a couple that we’d not yet seen on this trip, most impressive being the Large Pincertail/Blue-eyed Hooktail (Onychogomphus uncatus), with its fearsome looking claspers. Quite how those help in a passionate embrace is beyond me. 😉

… my on-going survey .

The story so far.

This farm’s irrigation lake, a lake of about 2 hectares, used to swarm with libellules (dragonflies and damselflies). I have recorded 18 species here, though a couple were admittedly most likely fly-throughs It was, though,a very thriving population with many breeding species and some in very large numbers. Swarms of various types of blue-striped damselflies (Coenagrionidae) used to be able to be seen ovipositing on the lake’s floating vegetation. Dragonflies rarely swarm but there were certainly large numbers of Red-veined Darters (Sympetrum fonscolombii) and Broad Scarlets/Scarlet Darters (Crocothemis eryhtaea) present. Also well represented were the ubiquitous Black-tailed Skimmers (Orthetrum cancellatum) and the slightly less ubiquitous White-tailed Skimmers (Orthetrum albistylum).

A few years ago, enter the Grass Carps and the ornamental-but-otherwise-useless Koi Carp intensively reared by a fish farmer with his own agenda and who, we suspect, “advised” farmer Luc about the lake’s ecology. The ecology certainly changed. The erstwhile abundant bird life disappeared completely as did the vegetation [Grass Carp – there’s a clue in the name]. The Libellule population also crashed. Several species disappeared altogether and those that remained appeared to be hanging on by their wing tips; no more swarms, just species represented by a few individuals, their populations now counted in single digits.

Last year we saw no evidence of the ornamental-but-otherwise-useless Koi Carp, though there were still many schools of fish of varying sizes to be seen cruising about. Also visible were a few huge leviathans which may well be the vegetation-eating Grass Carp. Farmer Luc visited us in England last year and he seemed to realize that the ecology of his lake had been changed for the worse. I think he wants to redress the balance.

What of this year?

This year, we see (again) no evidence of any ornamental-but-otherwise-useless Koi Carp, just the floating feeding device lashed in a quiet corner of the lake unused. There are still very many fish of varying sizes, though perhaps less than last year, which would be a move in the right direction. We’ve been told by Marcel, farmer senior, that a Cormorant took up residence for quite a while and was doing its best to reduce the fish population. Now, however, other than an occasional visit by a passing Mallard, there is no sign of any birdlife on the lake. Neither, still, can I see any evidence of floating vegetation, the vegetation that is so necessary for damselfly oviposition. The story remains much the same as last year but with possibly less fish.

Thus far I have again logged 10 species of Odonata but all in very low numbers. The one species that does seem to be doing quite well is the Western Clubtail (Gomphus pulchellus), which we’ve seen probably approaching double digits. Of one of the previously most numerous dragonfly species, the Red-veined Darter (Sympetrum fonscolombii), a normally very successful species with a reproduction cycle of less than a year, I have seen so far just one example. The Broad Scarlet/Scarlet Darter (Crocothemis erythraea), also previously very numerous, looks as if it has disappeared altogether. I noticed this last year but wondered if we were ahead of the flight season. This year I know that’s not the case because other lakes nearby are supporting good numbers of them already.

I’m happier to note that the delightful Tree Frogs, missing last year, have this year returned to the trees and hedgerows lining the campsite pitches. Their demise could well have been down to a severe winter with considerable snow fall a couple of years ago. Also, though we have still seen no sign of any tadpoles, we have have had an allmost nightly chorus of water frogs croaking in the lake and come eye to eye with a small froglet in the grass just beyond Guillaume. So, I imagine the water frogs are managing to breed and that some spawn is surviving the appetites of the still large fish population.

The lake, though, remains a somewhat sad sight, given the rich diversity of life that used to thrive here. At least no further damage is being done but, alas, significant damage has already been done. What is needed is some vegetation, not only for the Odonata but also for water birds – dabbling ducks need something to dabble for, after all. I’m wondering if what is needed is a good handful of predatory fish. Some Perch would make short work of the shoals of smaller fish and maybe a Pike or two would deal with the larger buggers. Then perhaps we’d get some vegetation back in the lake.

Dream on, Franco. I imagine nature will eventually strike a more natural balance once again; I’m just impatient. 😉

As usual, when we arrived at our campsite we drove onto our assigned pitch and had in-depth discussions as to where precisely to site Guillaume. We’ve been here on this pitch so many times sthat we know pretty much where we want him but the discussions have to be had. I nudged him forward, facing the lake, and checked how level he was side to side. Not bad, he needed just one wooden block under a wheel to bring him to level. Brakes on, wheels chocked (he’s pointing downhill), corner steadies down and we were here.

I didn’t notice disturbing anything in the business of setting up – connecting the waste, connecting a water supply, etc. – but this morning, as I was topping up the water and rummaging around in Guillaume’s nose locker for Darwin-knows-what, I heard a frenetic flutter from one of the bushes beside our pitch. I peered into the bush and just about at eye level noticed a small bird’s nest. Nobody was home.

After finishing a few chores I returned to peer at the bird’s nest again and was delighted to see a small bird hunker down into it. Guillaume had a neighbour about 5ft/1.5m away from his nose but getting a decent look at the bird to try to identify it was very difficult. More than anything else, having pitched right next to its chosen home, we were very keen to disturb it as little as possible. I’d feel terrible if we caused a bird to abandon a nest and clutch of eggs. It seemed reasonably tolerant in that you had to get really close to cause the poor thing to flee but we determined to give it as wide a berth as possible.

After several failed attempts, I managed to get a decent lie up with a long telephoto while mum was sitting on the nest. I had thought perhaps Spotted Flycatcher but once a recognisable photo was to hand it clearly wasn’t flecked enough. My next thought was a warbler of some kind, say a ChiffChaff or Willow Warbler but they have greenish heads and eye stripes. Nah! Our culprit had a russet brown cap. Ah, female Blackcaps have a brown cap, perverse creatures that they are. Guillaume’s neighbour was a nesting Blackcap. Sometimes hubby took over egg-sitting and, with a distinctly black cap, was much more readily recognisable. [The bird in the picture, by the way, is panting, not singing – temperatures were hitting 33°C/91°F today.]

Still no camping neighbours for Guillaume, which suits us, though it isn’t so hot for Luc and Nadine.