MOULIN DE THONAS, CÉVENNES
Riet, her son Iman and I are just back from one week's holiday in the
Cévennes, a high plateau, dissected by very deep gorges, in Southern
France. We flew from Amsterdam to Marseille, used one day to 'sniff' the
Camargue and spent one week, in mostly wonderfully warm and summery
weather, at the Moulin de Thonas, a quite isolated house (I never found
out why it was called a mill) in a deep valley in the eastern Cévennes,
the area of schist soils and forests with sweet chestnuts as the main
tree. To get there we drove via St Jean du Gard and St Etienne en Vallée
Francaise, the latter the closest village, with c 600 inhabitants, and
then along a very narrow and curved road for another 5 km, and finally via
a rather difficult up and down dirt track to the house itself. This valley
is entirely forested, and so little populated that a map at the beginning
of this narrow road shows all the individual houses! Our house was on the
North side of the valley, so that we gained the sun late and lost it
rather early, although we could watch out to the other sunny forested
slope (the valley was almost 100m deep, I estimate) until after nine in
the evenings.
Below our house there was a small lawn, with a large spruce and an
ugly-looking tamarisk tree, and in front of that again, the small orchard
and field of the neighbour, a very friendly old guy of probably almost 80,
who worked, at his own speed, from early in the morning to late in the
evening on his plot. Lower down the field sloped down to the little river,
where ash and alder trees grew, and where there was sufficient water even
now for us to hear its murmuring all the time from the house. The opposite
slope was completely forest-covered, with sweet chestnuts Castanea
dominating (they used to be the main crop of the area in older times, and
since then have propagated themselves---there were lots of saplings also
now), but also many other trees: many birches, some maples, oaks, poplars
and on the highest part also pines.
During the week we made many excursions to other parts of the Cévennes,
but I concentrate here on the immediate surroundings of our abode, where
we often sat and ate, drank coffee or read, and thus got a good impression
of the daily bird life. There was a constant and fabulous bird concerto
all day, with the Nightingale, the European Blackbird, the Song Thrush ,
the Chaffinch and the Blackcap as the major players. Interestingly enough,
they all had slightly different daily rhythms: the Nightingale was often
silent in the evenings, unexpectedly, but started up again later and sang
almost through the night, while the Blackcap stopped singing just before
sundown, and the Song Thrush, of which we had a really virtuoso nearby,
was at its best in the early evenings. When darkness fell, small bats
(Pipistrellus?) came out and circled around the house, and most evenings
we also heard the somewhat half-hearted calls of a Tawny Owl, for whom
this is probably already late in the season.
As many of the chestnut trees were old and venerable, the area must be an
ideal one for woodpeckers, and indeed we heard Green Woodpeckers almost
constantly, and also saw Black Woodpeckers fly across the valley several
times. A Great Spotted Woodpecker visited our spruce tree at regular
intervals, and surprised me by hopping around on the smaller branches
'like a normal bird', instead of clinging to the stem. But the most
welcome, and also most regular, visitors to the spruce were a pair (?) of
Firecrests, a bird I don't see that often and even then seldom well; here
they returned to the tamarisk and the spruce almost every hour, and
although never still, could be watched quite well. They quarreled
regularly, emitting very high calls, that I could not hear, but I did hear
their spirited little song strophes now and then. They are most endearing
little birds!
In the air over the valley the local Buzzard often circled over its
territory, and the first two days---but not later--- we also could watch
two Honey Buzzards sailing over the valley. A Short-toed Eagle crossed the
valley a few times, as did Grey Herons and once even a Mallard, while, as
virtually everywhere in the Cévennes, the air was now and then full of
Swifts and Crag Martins, the most common swallow here.
We did not see all that many other birds in the area. But there were tits:
mostly Great and Blue, and once a whole family of Marsh Tits, and one
evening we heard the crystal-clear cadences of a European Robin. (We noted
single Dunnocks and Winter Wrens elsewhere in our valley). Along the river
there were, although rarely close to home, Grey Wagtails, and near the
small farms now and then also Pied Wagtails, but we saw neither House
Sparrows nor Starlings here. Carrion Crows were overhead occasionally and
once or twice also a Raven, while Jays were quite common, but Magpies and
Jackdaws virtually absent here (though common enough elsewhere in the
area).
As you can see, a quite normal French mountain valley with no special
birds, but a very pleasant place to spend a week!
Wim Vader, Tromsoe
Museum
9037 Tromsoe, Norway
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