30th July 2023 The walk from home near Hextable in north west Kent to the corn bunting colony up on the downs passes along a tall, ancient hedgerow before emerging onto the rolling arable fields. This year the fields are down to flax and there are no nesting buntings to be seen or heard in…
Tag: butterflies
Postcards from the Ariège – March 2022
I spent March 7th to May 19th 2022 and May 20th to July 8th 2023 based at Luzenac in the Ariège Mountains. This then is the first monthly review; a chance to take a another look at this great, mountain wilderness that is so rich in biodiversity. March in 2022 is surprisingly warm and often…
Wet meadows in the Pyrénées-Orientales
2nd and 4th June 2023 The road to Spain and Andorra from Ax-les-Thermes is a busy, twisting road up a magnificent, mountain valley. Before the turn to Andorra, the main road to Barcelona cuts through a long tunnel which opens into a wide and open valley totally different in character to the steep valleys of…
Ariège’s Resurrection Plant
Sunday 2nd July 2023 The Biros valley in the western Ariège is the nearest location to find Ramonda myconi according to to the excellent Biodiv’Occitanie website; this is the sister plant to the Ramonda serbica, which I was excited to find on the hills to the south of Lake Skadar on the eastern edge of…
Around Mijanès
Col de Pailhères at an elevation 2,001 m is an arduous but popular 20km cycle ride from Ax-les Thermes or a shorter but more strenuous one, with some remarkable hairpin bends, from Mijanès on the other side. At the summit, the support vans wait for the groups of exhausted riders with a table of refreshments….
Col du Pradel and upper Rebenty valley
23rd June, 2023 This is my favourite Col, with a narrow road that in places is now deep in cow manure as the herds have been moved up to the mountain grasslands for the summer; each is about 30 to 40 grey, white cows, many with huge bells hung round their necks, accompanied by their…
Gorges du Rébenty
The gorges du Rébenty near Joucou is a wild section of river that loses altitude with remarkable rapidity through the limestone. The gorge is surrounded by forests and meadows. The forest edges are rich in butterfly and lady orchids; the meadows are littered with burnt-tip orchids amongst an array of calcareous grassland flowers. Overhead there are…
Aston Valley’s Apollo
This is a wild valley only tempered by the hydroelectric dam at the top together with its feeder pipes, substation, lower dam and pylons. The fast-flowing stream runs down the steep valley through dense forest for some 10 miles to Château Verdun. At the furthest most point before the tarmac runs out there is a…
Wadi Marabah, Asir Mountains
The town of Abha sits on the Asir mountains at over 2,000m where the air is cool all year round and so in summer the population triples as Saudis escape the desert heat. In February it is quiet like any out of season resort; from here we travel north along the mountain ridge where at…
Out like a lion…
On the last day of March the temperature drops 10 degrees and the next day the snow arrives on a cold north wind. March goes out like a lion. At the start of March, the weather is not lambish at all. The skies are a constant stone grey and the sun entirely absent. The trees…
Painted lady
A butterfly lands on the gravel path in Farningham wood and folds its wings; it is unrecognisable. Neither a wall brown nor a grayling both of which nearly always fold up, just a perplexing something in between; the colours are subtle and beautiful and it turns out to be a painted lady doing what it…
Summer shades
Sometimes there is no story, no theme to wrap some pictures around, just the rich sights of late summer to enjoy. Bright sun against a dark thundercloud, flowers in morning light, the appearance of the last swifts in the sky and the effervescent and colourful insects; even the irritating paparazzi, the clegs and mosquitoes, and…