Insect that Wishes it was A Butterfly

                                          click on image to enlarge and see the resentment in this bug's eyes...

This is the best year I can remember for Swallowtail Butterflies and for this insect that flies over meadows as if it were a butterfly...

Haiku XXXIII

The birds' dawn chorus,

The clamour of the Angelus,

Compete to wake us.

Conceived April 4th.

Migrations Concluded and Continued

Portrait of The Lady herself,  (Painted Lady Cynthia cardui) typically slightly worn look with so much travelling; some individuals have very tattered, transparent wings yet still fly strongly. This photo was taken on June 12th after the main migration as it was impossible to get a photograph when they were on the move. The flower is a ragwort.  Click to enlarge and see the beauty of the hind wing.

The swallows (Hirundo rustica) were on migration for a long time but by the time I had returned to Le Port, on 30th April, from watching their dark red bellied  cousins the Egyptian Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica savignii) feeding over the River Nile in temperatures of 44c at Aswan,  their migration was over. Instead of the feeding flocks wheeling overhead, sometimes visible and sometimes not, but always audible even if 100 meters up in misty cloud, there was just a pair sitting on the telephone wires in deep conversation, occassionally flying in through the barn windows and disappearing for ten minutes or so whilst the dialogue continued. 

I can remember one year lying in bed with two swallows roosting on top of the central lampshade, flying in and out and spending long periods burbling to each other like a couple discussing the virtues and hazards of a new residence. The Swifts have arrived at last and were wheeling in the skies overhead on the 1st of May but they might have arrived any time since the 14th April when I left for Egypt.

Another migration is underway though. This morning I noticed medium-large, brownish but powerfull and fast flying butterflies passing through at a rate of about one every two minutes, flying along the front of the house, sometimes straight between the stone gate posts and down the road northwards, without being beguiled by any of the flowers in the garden or the field.  Sometimes three or four in quick succession or once, a pair wheeling around one another but still moving northward into a steady breeze. At first I thought they were a species of greyling but when finally one stopped long enough on the last of this years lilac flowers, and a second was drawn to a daisy on the newly cut lawn, it was clear that I was looking at the migration of the greatest of all travelling butterflies, the Painted Lady (Cynthia cardui). Eventually I identified seven so I suppose the rest were also Painted Ladies too? 

The butterflies continued to fly past during the midday and early afternoon ceasing only occassionally as the wind strengthened and gusted. At this point a large bat appeared, species unknown but with reddish brown body and other parts black. It was remarkable to see how transparent its wings were against the bright sky as it flew over me. Perhaps this is a female recently emerged from hibernation and about to give birth? It has been cold and wet for the past two weeks so hunting by day may be a necessity. All it has to do is wait for the Painted Ladies and it can take one a minute but it will have to move fast!

Also today I saw the first Scarce Swallowtail (Iphiclides podalirius) feeding on rocket flowers - this species is not scarce here - it is a dramatic butterfly. Unfortunately my camera battery was recharging so I was unable to photograph it. There seems to be a variety of the Southern Small White (Artogeia mannii) which lacks a black spot on the upper fore wing and one of these was feeding on Rocket flowers too.  I also saw a Speckled wood (Pararge aegeria aegeria) but I had also seen this species earlier in April.

There were a few feathers from a bird kill in the field with dark grey and some all white feathers and some green sheen on a grey feather. Difficult to identify but probably a pigeon favoured prey of the Peregrine. Too big to be a white wagtail, one of which was killed in early April on the path leading up to road from the walnut orchard. A kestrel was the first bird I saw on my return on 30th April  it seemed to have been perching on the roof and was seen there in a April too and the species has used the barn in previous years. There is also a buzzard skulking in the trees by the river where it is frequently mobbed by the blackbirds. A Peregrine was seen in early April too and there is a population of black kites overhead but they rarely seem to come down, instead they spend time harrassing the herons in their heronry 500m. upstream. There are numerous jays and magpies so there is a certain amount of predatory pressure here on the local bird and small mammal population.

There in a Nightingale singing  by the main road but it does not appear to be using the river bank probably because the river is very high following more than 8 inches of rain during my absence. I heard two chasing one another in the foliage by the road as I returned from the bakery. Does this mean there are two pairs, or was it a domestic rumpus?

Past Notes:

The first cuckoo of spring was heard on 1st April in the hills between La Chapelle Pechaud and St Laurant la Valee. 

Also on all fools day, two swallowtails (Papilio machaon) were seen in different places in the hills. Two more were seen on 4th April. Bicycling down the Ceou valley on 1st April  there were clear, separate, pockets of Orange Tip (Anthocharis cardamines) and Peacock butterflies (Inachis io), with counts of up to a dozen of each over 200 metres of track.

A blackcap was first heard singing on 31st March but they were already singing and fighting one another in the foliage surrounding the etang to the north east of Le Port  two days earlier. Does this mean that Le Port's gallery woodland and shrubs are not favoured habitat for this species?

The first migrating House martins were seen moving north fast about 30 metres above the river on 29th March, flying into a cold north wind.

Mr Joachim has gone home to Portugal

Le Port is made up of three sections. The middle section is ruinous with half the first floor still rotting from when the roof was left open during rebuilding in 1976 after it was interrupted by the death of J's father.  Under the remaining sound piece of flooring is a single room. On the brown painted door is written in a swirl of red paint "P & J", a momento from when we first occupied the house and camped in this room in 1976 and which subsequently lay empty for several years until we rescued our neighbours from a spot. Mr Joachim had occupied their property on the other side of the bridge for several years. In return he carried out quite a lot of gardening and some masonary work for them. They moved him out, did up the house and let it to a doctor and in later years to another Portuguese family. Mr Joachim was too valuable to loose and anyway they had an obligation to continue to house him under French law. Our empty property was the solution so there was a bit of persuasion. First along the lines that we should not leave the house empty and vulnerable to burglars, and secondly, and more persuasive was Mr Joachim's Master work on the long front wall supporting the terrace; this had been deprived of its mortar by successive flooding of the Dordogne and looked in immenent danger of collapse. He moved in. He never paid any rent and having rolled his eyes in horror at the mention of insurance (one of the few  statutory duties incumbent upon tenants in France) we paid that too togeher with the local tax. He must have moved in about 1985 and no man worked harder, leaving to work as a mason at seven in the morning on his motor scooter and never returning until after seven at night; he would then cut grass or tend the garden until it was completely dark after which he would prepare his supper and listen to the radio. He was illiterate taking letters to our neighbour to read and we discovered he had difficulty in recognising pictures on the packets of plant seeds. Gradually a quantity of boxes, old tools and pieces of bicycle built up in the hall around his door and the middle section became infused with a particular earthy smell, he never opened the window of his room or put up curtains. He would return to Portugal in the early summer for planting on his small holding and again in the Autumn for harvest, as the years went on these absences became longer. He would leave before Christmas or earlier if the rain became too much and interefered with the masonary work. 

At one point his sixteen year old daughter turned up, a very robust young woman and very mature compared to Raph who was the same age and she was already pregnant and preparing to have the child out of wedlock. His two sons also came to stay for a spell before moving off to Switzerland to marry and set up a building transport company with a single lorry. There was tragedy too, one of his daughter's in law suffered from depression and threw herself from a bridge and drowned; his wife and daughter were often ill too. Our neighbours were full of stories of the scams he ran and how rich he really was, the sort of nonsense  typically  directed towards a hard working outsider by settled communities. He told us one of his daughters ran a chicken farm with over 3,000 chickens and that his children had persuaded him to put central heating in his Portuguese home. It was, he said, a home big enough to house all his children and grandchildren when they returned from their work around Europe. 

His work for us was sporadic, his great work was the wall he did to persuade us to allow him to move in, but in recent years he built us a giant barbecue out of rendered breeze blocks with a nice tiled roof. This, rather unkindly, became known as "the bus shelter".   His official retirement happened a couple of years ago but he still came  but for shorter periods with us until last year when he was away for five months in the summer and the onions he had planted become completely overgrown and it became clear a long relationship was soon to end. He carefully avoided helping with the walnut harvest although in residence. Whereas in earlier years we had worked togrther getting out the huge ladder from the barn and cleaning the gutters of plane tree leaves, now the two of us were not longer strong and agile enough to handle it safely and the gutters overflow when it rains. We had in some ways aged together.

For many years we had seen the light shining out onto the terrace from his uncurtained window at night or before dawn, and hear the whine of his motor scooter at dawn and dusk.  But today I went into the middle section of the house to find the key in the door of his room and it swept clean, the boxes and parts all cleared away, the cupboards of gardening tools bare,  his house key still under the same piece of tile outside on the window sill where he  left it each day for over twenty four years whilst he was out working . My last memory of  him is standing outside with a broad smile in an ancient leather jacket and a floppy hat, brown with age, upon which was written in large red letters "Portugal Glorioso".