A murmuration ~ Quel monde formidable!

 This is one of my “regular” country watch articles about “One of the most stunning examples of collective behaviour [in animals]” seen in the world, and we recently had the privilege to view this quite stunning aerial ballet, at close quarters and for some considerable time.

 After our exploits by the sea on New Year’s Eve (see Happy New Year 2013 blog post) where we failed in the darkness to actually find the water, the tide was well out!!  We decided to have a day off from house renovation and take a picnic to the seaside.  It being the depths of winter the picnic was more of a huddle in the car, buffeted by strong winds, whilst overlooking the windswept Anguillon bay, a huge muddy inlet north of La Rochelle and famed for seafood production and a wealth of marine bird life.

 After the picnic, we managed to find a considerable amount of driftwood, blown onto the piled up rocks of the extensive sea defences, by the winter’s gales.  With the car loaded with the makings of an artistic driftwood mirror and some left to burn in our log burner with the promise of a multicoloured flame show due to the salt deposited in the wood, we set off across the flat wide open reclaimed marshes that now border the bay and which must have in autrefois (olden days) have meant that the bay was considerable bigger. As we came around the low cliffs of one of a number of low lying islands, now scattered over the flat marshland like beached boats, there it was in front of us, a huge flock of choreographed starlings, twisting and pirouetting around the wide open sky, balletically moving as one complete, despite there being many thousands of individuals in the cast.  

What we were witnessing and marveling at was “the spectacular display of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), the noun for which is a murmuration," scientists Andrew King and David Sumpter said in a 2012 Current Biology report.  Their report continued:

“The mesmerizing act is typically seen at dusk throughout Europe, between November and February. Each evening, shortly before sunset, starlings can be seen performing breathtaking aerial manœuvres, before choosing a place to roost for the night. These range in number from a few hundred to tens of thousands of birds. Murmurations exhibit strong spatial coherence and show extremely synchronized manœuvres, which seem to occur spontaneously, or in response to an approaching threat.

According to Wired magazine, which cited a 2008 report about this animal behavior: "Each starling in a flock is connected to every other. When a flock turns in unison, it’s a phase transition. At the individual level, the rules guiding this are relatively simple. When a neighbour moves, so do you.”

I’m sure that for many of you the word murmuration will be a new word, it certainly is for me, and we found ourselves wondering, as we continued to marvel at the dexterity of this huge flock, as it performed initially in front of the car and subsequently all around us, what’s the trigger for such movements, as every so often the whole flock would land briefly on one of the nearby fields, before quite suddenly and unannounced swirling back into the air like a moving “painting on the sky”, as one appreciative netizen described the amazing bird ballet.  (I guess murmuration was new to many of you, but what about “netizen,” the google spellchecker certainly doesn’t recognise it.  I can only assume that it is a play on the label internet citizen!)

Hence, reference to various pieces of research done into this phenomena and quoted above.  This research is largely inconclusive, and to date no-one has come up with a definitive answer for the behaviour.  However, imagine my surprise when just a week or two later, I was reading an article out of Country Walking magazine, about Icons of England.  The particular part of the larger article was written about George Alagiah, I’m sure known to most of you as a journalist and television news presenter and entitled “A Place in the Country”.  Now, some time later I’m at a loss as to what his Icon of England was as the article has long gone up in smoke, helping to light the woodburner and maybe I’m thinking HE WAS THE ICON!  But in the article he talks about a theory for the art of murmuration. He says that why the starlings “twist and turn in unison, is because the ones on the outside are constantly trying to get to the inside where they feel safer.”  Now in the absence of anything else more convincing, that explanation will do for me!!

It’s Official;

Les anglais sont bougres paresseux

You can translate that one yourselves, suffice to say the last word is lazy and the one preceding it, which in translation would in fact follow it, sounds quite similar to the English if you say it slowly!!

It’s some time ago now, indeed before Christmas which will become apparent later, but I was up at a early hour and sorting out a few things, like emptying the dishwasher and making some bread for lunch, to go with the homemade cheese I had made the day before – impressed or what, but I expect more likely to illicit snide comments like – “Well you’ve got all the time in the world now you’d retired!!”  But, actually it doesn’t particularly feel like that at times, and it’s very true what people seem to always say when they have retired, that they never know how they ever found the time to go to work.

Indeed, having just spent the first two nights in our caravan for over two years, we realise just how busy we have been.  We even felt that we had convinced the neighbours (a supercouple, as in superman, in their late seventies who rarely seem to pause for breath, except when they are shouting at each other, they’re both a little hard of hearing.), with all the initial work in the garden and subsequent house renovation that we were at least trying to keep up with the Joneses!!  Madam had even stopped pointedly quipping, so often, about le petit pause’s or coffee breaks we would have sitting outside in the sunshine between coats of paint or rolls of insulation (although these were as much a case of coming down for air as having a break, but that’s a story told elsewhere!).

Well, there I was flour in my hands when there came a knock on the door, and there was Madam carrying what in this season of goodwill to all men, could only be a Christmas card, complete with English stamp.  Now as the French don’t particularly send Christmas cards, I assumed that it must be a card for us that had been mistakenly put into their letter box and she was giving to its rightful recipient.  But no, their followed a fast piece of one-sided dialogue, which almost had me flummoxed at this hour, but the envelope was clearly marked for our neighbours and somewhere in her rapid delivery was mention of a Nancy and Tony.  Getting rid of the flour from my hands and giving myself time to process the conversation, I realised that the card had come from an English couple who had for many years lived in one of the houses in our hamlet, just behind our house, but who had a couple of year’s previously moved back to the UK.  What I was actually being asked to do was to “translate” the address on the back of the card, written in a very small spidery hand and with an English style address, which like all things English, Madam doesn’t understand and that probably goes for us too!!

With the aid of a magnifying glass that she had kindly thought to bring, I was able to write the address of their new house in deepest Norfolk, with some quite odd sounding names, and we the passed the time of day about whether I had known Tony and Nancy and how she was wanting to sent a reply. 

I then thought I better explain the flour, which I think I failed to mention above was actually in a Tupperware container, not spread over a board and up to my elbows as I manually kneaded the dough.  I was in fact adding the ingredients to the tin before popping it into the machine which would then do the rest.  Initially, Madam was suitably impressed by the fact I told her I was making bread, until I showed her that really a machine was doing all the hard work, at which point she began to look decidedly luddite in her appearance, the look heightened as she turned around and noticed the half emptied dishwasher. 

Collecting herself just in time, she cheerily thanked me for my help and went on her way.  I was only grateful she hadn’t asked after Linda, who I would normally have called to help with the translation should I have needed it.  If she had realised she was still in bed that would have been even more evidence of us being bougres paresseux!!!   

  

Happy New Year 2013! ......

Ok, I know it’s a wee bit late, but the truth of the matter is that as I hardly seem to have been missed I’ve been smarting!!  Actually, truth be known I’ve taken something of a sabbatical, as we seem to have been incredibly busy in the first three months of 2013 and thus incredibly tired, which really accounts for why quarter of a year has passed without you hearing from me – quite incredible when you put it like that.  But, I’m back as the weather finally seems to be thinking about spring and beyond, we had a picnic lunch yesterday on the way back from a couple of days away in the caravan (yes, amazingly and not without a considerable effort, including once when the lever slipped quite literally falling arse over apex, the caravan has risen from its resting place, deep in the garden and we have been away in it for the first time in just over two years!!  At the moment it hasn’t dropped back into the garden as we are away again shortly and will also need to reassess where it is going to live, to avoid future hernias and arching backs, knees – in fact everywheres!!!).  We could also today have put out the garden furniture and eaten lunch on the terrace, whoops, sorry, I forgot that much of England remains in the grip of winter!!

But here as with you, it’s been a funny old spring, a number of shortish very cold snaps, lots of rain with some milder weather, not least thankfully on a somewhat wet but warm New Year’s Eve to which, if only for the bare faced cheek of it, I am returning here!

We had a good Christmas, with Daniel and Lisa visiting for a week and some good friends joining us for Christmas dinner.  We also this year successfully, as a severe storm rather curtailed last year’s attempt, had our Carols under the Lamp, for a number of English and French friends and neighbours, utilising our part garage / part summer kitchen for a fun evening of songs in English, French and some mixed verse and verse about, with mulled wine, home-brewed English beer and nibbles including the local speciality – mogettes, with which many of our visitors will be familiar.  These are partly dried white beans, not dissimilar to haricot beans, cooked slowly for three hours with plenty of herbs, garlic and in my recipe some onion and carrot.  As with all traditional dishes in France, every household has their own “correct” recipe, to which I have added my own take on the dish.  Served on pieces of French bread toasted on the barbecue and rubbed with raw garlic, the fact that the very large pan was nigh on emptied, must mean the recipe worked even if the older visitors would I’m sure have agreed, it was the not the recipe ancien!!

All too soon the festivities were over and perhaps no bad thing the eating and drinking moderated, and we were left thinking about what to do on New Year’s Eve, not a night that is celebrated so publically in France, with families often staying in and dining French style from one year to the next!  We were invited to our friends who had come for Christmas Day, but had decided that as we were not visiting England (as we had a trip planned early in the year, to once more help with the running of Linda’s sister’s pet shop in York, of which I’m sure there will be more later – I may not have been blogging, but I’ve made copious notes for future blogposts!), we wanted to do something different.  Finally, we decided that we would see the New Year in on the local beach, walking hand in hand bathed in the warm glow of moonlight, but as beaches usually mean sea, I decided that swimming from one year into the next would indeed be very different indeed; Linda meanwhile offered to hold the towel!  One thing led to another and inspired by two things, an advert for money transfers, from the UK to France that had been regularly placed in a magazine we buy about France and features a considerably older couple than ourselves, jumping completely naked off the end of a short pier into a crystal clear warm azure sea, bathed in hot sunshine, with a caption along the lines of – live life to the full whilst we take care of your money!  (Sadly, the advert seems no longer to be running and I can’t track down the company to put in a claim for catching a chill!)  The second inspiration came from a poem by one of my favourite poets, Michael Rosen, called “Walking into Wales with our trousers down!” where he and a school friend do just that, walk into Wales with .......!  So, if you’re not there yet the swimming became skinny dipping, although in my search for the above advert, I found a rather fine poster, featuring a similarly mature and just as naked couple jumping into the sea with the caption: “We don’t skinny dip, we chunky dunk!” which in the circumstances is I fear more apt in my case!!  Linda meanwhile now offered to hold the towel, the clothes and the camera!!

The great night arrived and we had a pleasant meal, sans alcool as we were driving and the bottle of bubbly, as well as the flask of coffee, were already packed in the car, and we were having to drive for quite some way to find the sea!  We then twiddled our thumbs a little as we had a bit of a wait, not wanting to arrive too early and have to hang around watching what promised to be a somewhat black, cold and uninviting sea, which this year would certainly not be bathed in bright moonlight, as it so happened to coincide with the period of the lunar cycle called the “dark moon” when basically you can’t see it!!  At just after ten o’clock with a certain amount of trepidation we set off, into a howling wind, which caused the relatively light drizzle to be thrown at the car like a torrential downpour, more I suppose like the weather you would expect in the poem above rather than the advert, however on the bright side, if that’s possible on such  a dark and miserable night, the outside temperature reading on the car remained pleasingly towards 10˚C, positive rather than minus, which might have been more likely at this time of the year!

France was deserted, we hardly passed a single car on the whole journey, although quite strangely in the middle of nowhere, we were taking one of my infamous short cuts, we passed a service bus on its way, completely empty to the local town, arriving in time for the multitude of non-existent passengers to join the non-existent throng of people in the square at midnight welcoming in the New Year and saying good-bye to the old. Indeed every village and small town we passed through seemed deserted as once the shutters are closed on French houses, little light escapes and there is little to tell passersby if anyone is at home!

Arriving about an hour and a quarter later at the beach, the large car park which in summer is often full to overflowing was deserted, we were one of only three cars, the occupants of the other two possibly part of the all too evident partying throng in the large and rather expensive restaurant overlooking the beach!  This restaurant, full of diners and with one end turned into a dance floor with a disco and flashing lights, cast a strange glow over the wet sand outside its windows, and was so evident as it was the only place open and indeed the only place that showed any visible sign of life.  If it hadn’t have been for this noisy oasis, we could have been in a ghost town and imagined not the end of the year, but the end of the world.

We had a quick and fairly soggy trip around the deserted streets to kill time and to keep warm, before heading back to the car to prepare to chunky dunk from one year until the next!  Before we knew it we were heading out over the wet sand, Linda holding the towel, the bag for my clothes and the camera and me as I prepared to bare all, not only my soul!  The sound of the waves came to us from the darkness and dark it was as not only was there no moon, but as in all small French towns and villages most of the street lights are extinguished at about eleven o’clock and come back on in time for the morning rush hour during the winter.  And we walked towards the waves, crashing fairly gently onto the gently sloping sand, whipped up by the strong wind blowing down the coast, surprisingly warm for the time of year and momentarily the heavy drizzle had abated.     And, we walked and walked and walked until we were so far out that the coloured lights from the restaurant barely reached us and still the crashing waves were but a sound in the distance.  So, in the end the skinny, or should that be chunky happened, without the dip or the dunk as the sea seemed to have disappeared, as the church clock chimed the hour and a cheer went up in the distant restaurant, the clientele oblivious to the flashing, of a camera far out on the sands, and yes Linda took the photos to prove it, the clothes nearly being dropped on the wet sand in her haste to get the shots, but before you ask – no you can’t, you’ll just have to take our word for it!  Well, maybe in time a distance rear view if only to underline the chunky as opposed to the skinny!  Returning to the car, we celebrated with a small glass of wine, some hot coffee and some Maltesers, with the less fattening centre so as next time it might be skinny dipping!, whilst watching a quite paltry selection of fireworks from some of the surrounding houses and villages, in some cases the display seemed to consist of just one or two rockets!  Maybe, there were some Roman Candles, Catherine Wheels and the like that we couldn’t see!  It was then home through the deserted streets for a wee dram of something stronger to bring in the New Year and warm the cockles ..... of the heart of course!!!

It had been however unexpectedly warm, despite the dampness and surprisingly liberating, very in line with the motto of our adopted county – Liberté, égalité, fraternité, so whereas before I would say that if ever I went missing I’d be on and olive grove in the south of France, now it might be that you find me at the local campsite Le Colombier, it’s listed in the book as a naturist campsite, and although in the depth of the countryside, it’s not the surrounding nature that it refers to!!

So, did anyone else do anything interesting or different for the New Year!?!

   

and ...... an interesting if not prosperous year for you all!!! I’ll certainly do my bit to try and help!!!