Le Parc Naturel Régional de La Brenne

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Rarely do I use such long titles but in this case it’s pretty much enforced since that is the glorious full title of this, our first main stop.

The tail end of our first week has been advertising bad weather for quite some time. In fact, the whole of this week didn’t look good so we’d been toying with the idea of force-dragging south as swiftly as possible. Consequently, in our search for a suitable stopping point, we embarked on a relatively long first stage from Neufchâtel-en-Bray, almost 300 miles, to near Châteauroux. A mere 20kms west of Châteauroux lies the grandly named parc of the title. It is said to contain over 2000 étangs [lakes] which, presumably, explains the nearby autoroute rest area called “aire des mille étangs”. Go figure! Anyway, we visited this area about seven years ago in the company of a now late, lamented friend. On that occasion we came in July to see the local population of Purple Herons (Ardea purpurea) and, on a wander round one of the étangs I snapped my first and, I have to say, very poor picture of a dragonfly. That dragon turned was just about recognisable as a White-tailed Skimmer (Orthetrum albistylum), though I didn’t know it at the time. That earlier trip predated my current fascination with Odonata by several years.

Curiously, this rather grandly named park does not rate a mention in The Rough Guide (poor show!) so, working from memory, I believe the lakes are a result of ancient fish-farming by monks but don’t quote me. Since wildlife holidays come here dragonfly-spotting, it seemed like a useful stopping point for a couple of odo-nutters on their journey south.

We chose to stay at the base de loisir de Bellebouche. Normally, a campsite that is part of a base de loisir [leisure centre] beside a lake with a so-called “beach” would make me run a mile; such places are usually far too frenetic for my tastes. However, we are now entering low season and this area doesn’t seem to attract huge numbers of tourists anyway, maybe because it doesn’t feature in The Rough Guide. Additionally, this particular campsite seems exceptionally enlightened in that it does not allow dogs. Brilliant!

IMG_1388_Southern_Darter_male The weather turned out to be much better than we expected. After we arrived, the sun remained out and we had time for an initial exploration with cameras slung across our shoulders. I was particularly pleased immediately to notch up ½ new species. “What!”, I hear you cry, “half a species?” Yes, though I’d snagged a female Southern Darter (Sympetrum meridionale) two years earlier further south, I’d not wittingly seen a male – until now. Here is the splendid chap perched on some Bell Heather (Erica cinerea), or so Francine tells me.

IMG_1379_Southern_Darter_female One of the more significant features about Southern Darters is that they are particularly susceptible to infestation by mites. Just to complete the picture, though, perhaps, a single mite does not exactly constitute an infestation, here is a female with a mite on her left hind-wing – the mite is that small, spherical red blob towards her wing root. Sometimes they might [Ed: no pun intended] carry a dozen or more mites.

Better weather than expected, no dogs and a new specimen for the collection already – happy camper. Now, if we can just do something about the rugrats … 😀

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What a Difference A Wind Makes

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The last serious journey we made towing Guillaume was returning from the New Forest in the middle of August. On that journey we managed a blissful 30 m.p.g. That was about the best we’ve ever done. Today, having crossed the channel and hit La Belle France and the A16 autoroute running from Calais to Neufchatel-en-Bray in Normandy, we notched up a dismal 21 m.p.g. which represents the worst we’ve ever done.

Here’s the thing. Returning from the New Forest we were heading east/ north-east with a decent south-westerly wind. Today, once on teh French side of la Manche [the Channel], we were heading south-east straight into the prevailing wind which, it must be said, was particularly strong. There is another factor which is the3 roller-coaster nature of the A16 with several serious, rather lengthy hills, but the main factor in this staggering difference in fuel consumption is tail wind versus head wind. Still, it’s only money, and we are back in France.

Whereas the wind might not have been favourable, we did have one amazing piece of luck. We pulled into our favourite transitory campsite at 5:30 PM. Immediately, Monsieur grabbed a sign and placed it behind us; the sign read “Full”. “Vous avez de la chance”, he muttered to us as he returned to reception.

We’ve been camping in France for the better part of 30 years, much of it in high season. We’ve hardly ever made reservations. In all that time we have hit a full campsite on only one occasion and that, naturally, was in high season. (They let us stay on the hard-standing outside the campsite gates.) Though this is still technically high season, it really isn’t, most folks have returned in readiness for the new school term about to start. Today was unusual and I really don’t understand it. At least we got in.

Phew!

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Black Beauties

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My main quarry on this trip was a dragonfly I’ve been wanting to see all year; a Black Darter (Sympetrum danae). They aren’t scarce nor do they have a particularly restricted range, being pretty much all over the northern parts of the UK. However, they do not exist chez moi and moi is not especially good at travelling north. I already live far too far north, thank you very much. I was very excited, therefore, to note that a couple of locations on Doug Overton’s New Forest Dragonflies website claimed to be home to populations of Black Darters. Two such sites were close together: Avon causeway and Ramsdown plantation, both being near Bournemouth airport – excuse me, Bournemouth International airport. We set off in that direction. At least if I got bored, I could watch the aircraft. 🙂

IMG_1070_Black_Darter_male I’d marked the locations of what appeared to be the territorial ponds in good ol’ Garmin. We found somewhere to park near Avon Causeway in a lay by full of recycling skips and set off on foot. After half a mile or so, we crested a hill and descended towards some small ponds in a patch of rough ground called a nature reserve. The first pond had a well-trodden path around it. Straight away, I spotted a couple of Azure Damselflies (Coenagrion puella) and snapped away just to record their presence, though little else was obvious from our first vantage point. We picked our way cautiously around to the other side of the pond. Eventually, there, difficult to spot in its low-visibility clothing and hovering around a bunch of heather growing in the margins of the lake, was what just had to be a Black Darter male. It was a mature specimen, almost entirely black, and couldn’t have been anything else. Shortly it settled. My first sight of this handsome creature, our smallest dragonfly (it says in the Smallshire and Swash book).

IMG_2248_Sundew While I was mesmerized by my first Black Darter maintaining station over his territory, Francine had wandered off and made another intriguing discovery; she’d switched from carnivorous insects to carnivorous plants. This whole area, including the Black Darter’s modestly sized little pond, was home to colonies of Sundew plants (Drosera intermedia – we think). Clearly the life of smaller insects here was somewhat tenuous; not only were the dragonflies trying to make a meal of them but so were the plants, with their glistening, sticky beads of liquid waiting to trap the unwary. Even Franco was fascinated seeing these plants in the wild.

IMG_1104_Black_Darter_casquette Eventually we managed to drag ourselves away and went in search of the second site, a lake in Ramsdown plantation. This lake turned out to be a fabulously rich habitat on the side of a hill – entirely captivating. Sure enough, it was crawling with Black Darters, amongst other more familiar delights. We both spent some time watching a Black Darter male flying sorties from the ground when it suddenly decided to make a perch of Francine’s fancy French pink casquette [cap]. I imagine it thought it was a large heather flower, being similarly coloured. It even remained sitting calmly as I removed the cap so Francine could see her passenger more closely.

IMG_2289_Black_Darter_imm_male Immature male Black Darters are a little more colourful with varying degrees, depending on maturity, of yellowish markings. Francine nabbed an immature at one end of the lake while I was paddling in my wellies after other quarry.

IMG_1137_Black_Darter_female The path around the lake didn’t actually go all the way around the lake, we eventually discovered. On the opposite side we headed up the heather-covered hill in search of a way out without retracing our steps; there was none but it was a fortunate blind alley. Part way up, I scared up what turned out to be an elusive female Black Darter who flew just a short distance before posing for me, and very delightful she was, too.

What an excellent day! Other than a missing in-cop pair, we’d pretty much grabbed a complete collection of representative Black Darter individuals to add to our growing collection.

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Odo-nutter Network

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Now, look, I’m no great fan of management B.S. Darwin knows, I have to suffer enough of it in my time. One of the worst aspects was attending professional functions and being asked to “network” with others. That used to be called “building relationships” but no, not now. “Networking” is but one small step away from “running an idea up the flagpole to see who salutes it” or “let’s fly an idea and see if anyone shoots it down”. However, I must say that, when it comes to dragonfly hunting, getting to know like-minded individuals has proved to be most useful.

The Internet is not a bad source of Odonata nutters. One such useful Web contact has been a chap called Doug Overton who has an excellent New Forest Dragonflies website. He has a Google map of locations within the New Forest at which he lists the species he has observed. Doug’s the man who introduced us to Tiptoe and a few other spots on a previous New Forest trip. This time, with a specific goal in mind, I scoured his map of sites for new species in which I had a vested interest and made a note of them in my trusty Garmin eTrex h.

One site, Crockford Stream, apparently sports a population of the relatively rare and endangered (it’s on the Red List) Southern Damselfly (Coenagrion mercuriale). In fact, Crockford Stream is famous for them being specifically mentioned in a reference book on the subject, British Dragonflies by Smallshire and Swash. We had visited Crockford Stream on our previous trip but the Southern Damselfly looks like “just another blue damsel” so, in my earlier ignorance, I was likely to have dismissed or glossed over any that I might have seen. After a morning buying supplies, the afternoon seemed like a grand opportunity to go in search of this deceptively common-looking rarity.

Clouds were scudding past in what we might generously refer to as being “a stiff breeze”. As we were parking and preparing to set out, even a few rain spots fell out of the scudding clouds and scudded into our windscreen themselves. Actually the wind was quite strong: it was not a great day for Odo spotting. The poor little critters were likely to be hunkered down taking shelter.

IMG_1000_Southern_Damselfly Enter: hawk-eyed Francine. Almost the first thing she spotted was “a blue damsel” hunkered down, as expected, and clinging determinedly to a plant stem in the wind. I stared through the viewfinder. Sure enough, this was a Southern Damselfly. I couldn’t believe our luck but there it was and here he is in all his glory; our very first of his kind.

IMG_2188_Southern_Damselfly_female IMG_2211_Southern_Damselfly The scientific name of what we term somewhat curiously the Southern Damselfly, C. mercuriale, stems from the black design on segment 2 (S2) of the thorax which is said to resemble the winged helmet of Mercury, the messenger. This first specimen, however, showed  very distinct markings with the “wings” of Mercury’s helmet seemingly stuck up above the helmet on a stalk. As the sun put in various appearances between rapidly scudding cloud formations, we saw other individuals and the male here (right) shows the more classic shape with the wings sitting atop Mercury’s helmet. Check out the difference of the markings on the two males. For completeness, on the left is the female of the species, only one of which we saw but old hawk-eyes nabbed it.

IMG_2209_Small_Red_Damselfly_femaleIMG_1027_Small_Red_Damselflies_in_copOur book notes that Small Red Damselflies (Ceriagrion tenellum) often coexist with Southern Damselflies and they certainly do at Crockford Stream where we were treated to an in-cop pair (left) and an interesting female (right). If you look at this lady closely, you can see a small cluster of red dots on the side of her thorax. I’ve seen this phenomenon before on a Southern Darter in the south of France but not in the UK. She has a mite infestation, poor thing, and she did seem reticent to move, allowing me to approach close with Francine’s macro lens.

Maybe this networking stuff does work, after all.

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Scary Spiders

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Not that Franco and Francine are prone to getting stuck in ruts, but we’ve headed for the New Forest yet again. The scariest aspect of this trip is that Satan’s Little Disciples are on the loose from their sanity-preserving schools and the place is bound to be crawling with them. We are hoping, nay praying, that the fact that we have headed for a woodland campsite with no facilities will help reduce their presence and keep use relatively sane. We’re here for a reason, though. Not only do Satan’s Little Disciples hijack most of the British summer, they hijack a goodly portion of the British dragonfly season, too. To see some species, it is necessary to bite the bullet and put up with the little monsters. The bullet, of course, would be better used in shooting one of the Disciples but, regrettably, such behaviour isn’t allowed. Time to grin and bear it.

Travelling on Sunday, as is our practice, at least gave us an easy journey; there was very little traffic considering we are in the main holiday season. Little traffic, that is, heading south. As we entered the New Forest and drove out of Lyndhurst heading for Brockenhurst, the northbound traffic was nose to tail and stationary. In fact, the queue to get through Lyndhurst, designed to be a admirably effective bottle-neck, stretched almost all the way back to Brockenhurst. We sailed past southbound dreading our return journey in a week’s time.

P1010427_Guillaume_in_the_forest We lucked out. Arriving just after midday, we had about the best choice of pitches that it would be possible to have and, lo and behold, one was free that we had eyed-up on a previous visit. Without hesitation, we swung in and pitched Guillaume in a very pleasant and secluded woodland pitch.

IMG_0972_Southern_Hawker After lunch, for a spot of relaxation we wandered the mile or so down to a woodland glade near to Tiptoe. Here there is a “flush” that drains into a stony woodland stream and the area attracts Odos [Ed: that’s short for Odonata]. Signs were good since, on our route there, we spotted a Golden-ringed Dragonfly (Cordulegaster boltonii) which didn’t cooperate by resting and a Southern Hawker (Aeshna cyanea) which did pause briefly to devour a forest track snack.

IMG_0987_Keeled_Skimmer IMG_0991_Keeled_Skimmer Other than Joe Public on holiday messing about noisily in said stony woodland stream at Tiptoe, the main activity centred around Keeled Skimmers (Orthetrum coerulescens). Their posing wasn’t so hot, though, as they consistently insisted on sitting behind blades of grass. The females, particularly difficult to find as they hid low down in the grass, presented an especially thorny problem. I eventually found one but, once again, she sat behind the obligatory blade of grass. She’s beautiful, nonetheless, and this is the first shot of a female Keeled Skimmer in our catalogue.

There are quite a lot of Satan’s Little Disciples on the campsite and they all seem to be equipped with bicycles: trainee Hell’s Angels, presumably. So far, not too bad, though. Let’s see what our nerves are like after a week of it. 😉

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The Pinail Trail

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Last year, whilst trawling a few fellow dragonfly enthusiasts’ websites, I discovered an interesting looking nature reserve in France called La Réserve Naturelle du Pinail or the Pinail Trail for Anglophones. Of the 90+ species of Odonata in France, this site boasts 48 of them. One of my goals this year was to visit the place and investigate.

The reserve lies about 130kms/80mls ENE of Arçais, where we would be visiting our friends early on in the trip so first prize would have been to visit it on the way to Arçais. That would have been a little early in the dragonfly season, though, so our plan was to go there after Arçais and before heading further south. Regrettably the weather did not look good for Odos the day we left Arçais so we abandoned plan B as well and headed south anyway.

We did, however, manage to tear ourselves away from our favoured dairy sheep farm and called in for a day on the way back north. After 500kms/315mls we found that the campsite at Bonneuil-Matours left a little to be desired but, since we were there for a specific purpose, it was OK. It was even beside a river with its own set of damselflies. 🙂

IMG_1806_Pinail_TrailThe weather wasn’t great now, either, but at least this would serve as an orientation visit. We popped of relatively early in the morning to see what we could learn. The Pinail is a fascinating landscape of hundreds, maybe thousands, of small ponds. Following the development of the windmill, a lot of mills needed a lot of millstones and they were hewn from the land that now constitutes the Pinail Trail. The ponds that supposedly support all the dragonflies are the depressions left behind by the excavating of the millstones.

IMG_1748_Pinail_Trail IMG_1780_Pinail_Trail The first thing we noticed on entering the trail was that the water levels were disturbingly low. Some of the smallest ponds were actually dry. The Pinail was certainly suffering from the spring sécheresse [drought]. As we made our way around the shorter of two trails (~1.7kms) though, the larger ponds still had water and did show signs of life, though nothing like the number I would have expected from such a rich environment.

IMG_0873_Green-eyed_Hooktail Our first Odo spot made the entire trip worthwhile, though. At first I though I was focussing on another Clubtail (Gomphus) but it didn’t look quite right. as usual, I tracked it as it moved from perch to perch in the vegetation, snapped away and worried about identification later. This turned out to be a Green-eyed Hooktail (Onychogomphus forcipatus). [Ed: if that’s not a mouthful, I don’t know what is!] Though not uncommon, it was a new species for us and that’s always a thrill. Fabulous looking character, no? Just look at the vicious looking appendages at the end of the abdomen designed for grasping his mate. Talk about rough sex – ouch!

We returned in the afternoon for a second spin round to see if we could find one of its rarer inhabitants, the Dainty White-faced Darter (Leucorrhinia caudalis). Though Francine fancied that she spotted one, it scarpered as she raised her camera. We never found it or another one again.

In the words of a famous governor of California, “I’ll be back”.

Posted in 2011 Spring Tagged with: , , , ,

Beer o’Clock

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The press is on strike. Now there’s a thing. We have been unable to buy our French newspaper, Aujourd’hui, with the weather maps for the coming four days. Quite why the press thinks that a strike would adversely affect many people given today’s access to information on the Internet is beyond me but there you have it – on strike they are. IMHO, since I do not care if Mrs. Brown’s cat has been stuck up a tree, a press strike simply saves our wasting too much paper. We hooked ourselves in to farmer Luc’s free wifi and checked out the weather forecasts.

When to head north is always a source of debate for us. We have to be in Normandy on Saturday evening for a ferry on Sunday at about midday. It can be done in two days but we’re wondering whether to pause en route to check out the Pinail Trail near Poitiers. The Pinail is home to some fairly special Odos and, after careful studying of the weather maps on Meteo France, the source of the weather maps withheld by the on strike press, we have decided to drag ourselves away from our beloved sheep farm at Fanjeaux and head north tomorrow to enable a 1-day visit.

IMG_1386_Beers We returned from Bram market just before midday, paid Nadine for her hospitality and settled down for a relaxing beer o’clock. 12 0’clock midday is beer o’clock, assuming that it is warm enough. Today, it is warm enough even though the sky is dull. Here, with the aid of a little fill-in flash, are our chosen beer o’clock tipples, Francine favouring the Dutch Hoegaarden import (a white wheat beer), myself favouring the pleasantly malty Pelforth Blonde.

It is worth a few words, all personal opinion, about the state of beer brewing. In my view the Belgians have always been the masters of beer but Britain had an enviable reputation. We risk losing it. I like stronger beers, not because I like getting rolling drunk but because I prefer the flavour of stronger brews. For me, beer needs to be at about 5% ABV before it is really worth the time and effort. SO-called “session beers” at about 3.5% have always been a complete waste of time and money. There is a disturbing trend in England to reduce the alcohol content of beers in the UK these days, where 4% beers appear to be becoming popular. Even Stella Artois, ruined under license in the UK and always a pale shadow of the Belgian original, has reduced in strength from 5.2% to 5.0% with and equivalent reduction in flavour. Sad stuff!

France has never, as far as I’m aware, been held in high regard as a brewing nation but, once you get away from the boring regular Kronenberg and “33” products much loved of supermarket-raiding British day-trippers, it is actually very good. Many years ago I discovered Lutèce, a splendidly dark, malty Parisian brew clocking in at 6.5%. More widely known are their Bière-du-Garde and Jenlain offerings, all very tasty.

Back to my Pelforth which is reasonably widely available in supermarchés. Pelforth actually produces three beers, blonde, ambre and brune. The blonde, at 5.8%, is the weakest of the three. The brown is, I think, 6.5%. Here is a nation that understands that beer should be sipped and appreciated rather than glugged in vast quantity until one’s stomach is unpleasantly distended.

DSCN0039_PregnantI love this sign on the cans, too. With the alcohol at 5.8%, this is clearly a warning to men that they shouldn’t drink so many cans that they start trying to make women pregnant. The Hoegaarden carries a similar symbol but it is smaller, presumably because Hoegaarden is weaker (4.9%) thus making the risk lower.

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Space at a Premium

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Last year farmer Luc’s lake was not looking healthy enough for his liking. Most of the fish in it had died and much of the lake’s surface was covered with weed. Mind you, it did support a large population of damselflies and an utterly enormous population of frogs, despite Marcel (Luc’s father) trying to trap them for the plate, which sang more or less constantly all night long. We find the frogs’ singing acts like a lullaby and sends us to sleep though other campers have disagreed rather strongly.

Luc made an arrangement with a local pisciculture man who has a fish farm near Bram just a few kilometres away. He has stocked the lake with some enormous Grass Carp that cruise around resembling nuclear submarines eating the weed. The fish man, in exchange for this service, breeds Koi Carp in Luc’s lake. There are thousands of the tiny beggars which, when a little bigger, he will take out, grow on and sell, Koi being quite valuable fish.

IMG_0829_Ovipositing IMG_0850_Ovipositing I am a little concerned than the natural balance of the lake has been somewhat overcorrected. There are so many voracious, large grass Carp that there is now very little weed. Whilst the water may, indeed, look very clear, damselflies need some floating weed on which to perch and oviposit [lay eggs]. One result is that any small remaining patch of weed tends to attract a dense collection of damsels in tandem all trying simultaneously to  lay eggs. Today, I even saw one pair land on another pair, using the first female’s wings as a perch, and start trying to oviposit, seemingly in her face. “Get your damned eggs out of my face!”

A related concern is the effect of fish predation on the damsel and dragonfly populations. Both eggs and larvae are eaten by fish and, given the numbers of fish in the lake at the height of the dragonfly breeding season, I’m wondering how many will successfully mature for the coming years.

I’ll just have to return to monitor the situation. 😉

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Lunch at Gruissan

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Fanjeaux was suffering from the Pyrenean effect with overcast skies today whereas, 50mls/80kms away, the Mediterranean coast near Narbonne was expecting clear weather. A good time to go and finally investigate an area we’d been meaning to look at for some years. I’d have said “perfect time” were it not for the fact that it’s a Sunday. Being a sunny July weekend, the locals would be flooding beach-wards and, being a Sunday, the restaurants would most likely be full of locals enjoying the traditional French Sunday lunch out with the family.

P1010350_Gruissan P1010365_Gruissan Gruissan lies about 10mls/16kms south of Narbonne. There was, as expected, plenty of traffic on the autoroute but our journey was easy enough and cruise control got us there relaxed in about an hour. We even found a handy parking place which, given the traffic entering the town, had begun to be a bit of a concern. Gruissan itself, the old section, was as delightful little fishing port on one of the several lagoons in this area. As with many French towns, the ruins of a castle dominate the buildings which cluster beneath it.

P1010358_Gruissan_Lunch P1010359_Gruissan_Lunch P1010360_Gruissan_Lunch On a wander around the town studying a few menus, the local speciality appeared to be seiche à la plancha [griddled cuttlefish]. A la plancha is more usually associated with Spain but, hey, we weren’t that far from the border. Francine eventually spotted a restaurant with more appeal than most and, happily, with a spare table for two. We nabbed it. I had to try the seiche and Francine couldn’t resist a brochette de coquille St. Jacques [skewer of scallops]. Just to get us in the mood, we shared a plate of grilled mussels as an aperitif but they were so good we finished them before the snappy camera could react. 😀 Francine’s scallops were excellent but my baby cuttlefish lacked something in the flavour department – a little disappointing. Nonetheless it was a very pleasant lunch and the four young French children on a nearby table behaved impeccably as their parents got on with the serious business of eating.

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Les Chateaux de Lastours

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A spot of culture for today. North of Carcassonne and at the eastern end of les Montagnes Noires, is the reasonably precipitous valley of the river Orbiel. About half way up the valley is the village of Lastours boasting an unusually large number of châteaux for one small village: four.

The castles, originally three, have had an expectedly colourful history. They were Cathar castles which successfully resisted a siege by the crusaders of Simon de Montfort in 1209 during the religious wars, though they eventually negotiated a peaceful settlement having been besieged again by a different warmonger in 1227. [Ed: beats being burned at the stake, I suppose.]

The royal troops destroyed the village and original castles but built three new ones in different positions. Weird! The king “asserted his supremacy” [it says here] by building a fourth castle. Weirder! [Ed: you can never have too many castles, I say.] It is the ruins of these that we now see, and very impressive the sight is, too.

IMG_1503_Lastours You can, of course, clamber up paths to get a good close look at the stones from which the castles are constructed. Not being interested in stones, I can rarely see the point in so doing, though. In my view, attractions such as this are much more impressive when viewed from a more distant vantage point. Fortunately, some similarly minded person has constructed a belvedere on the opposite side of the valley which, for the princely sum of €2, provides this excellent view.

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