'Le Animaux des Alps'- Le Rouge et Noir

We're all proud of the stupidest, most insignificant things aren't we? I mean look at my birding record, my proudest moment of UK birding was this winter when I spotted a Glaucous Gull in flight and pointed it out to a fellow birder. Hardly inspiring stuff. Or my Greater Manchester highlight, spotting Little Egret on my local water park. But these are trumped into insignificance by my foreign highlight, which isn't even rare.

When I was but a little kiddiwink, complete with oversized and over-focussed Viking binoculars, we went on holiday to France and to the mountains, as I have done many times since. When there we stayed in a little place I can't remember the name of, but the point was that I could see all these little birds around the place, all foraging round car parks and in the gardens and on the roads. What were they? I asked this question to my birdbook, a less-than-portable coffee table photographic version of the Hamlyn guide.

And my first birding coup was finding the answer to this question; the 'Rouge et Noir' as they said in the local tongue, or the 'Black and Red' in my own. And I think this pretty much sums up the bird in question, for the Black Redstart is characterised by these two simple and contrasting colours.

Sadly uncommon in the UK, its fantastic to be able to see them common as dirt on the continent and in being common and ubiquitous in towns they're also predictably very approachable. This post, as with almost all my efforts to photograph this species, concentrates on the juveniles, purely because they're more approachable...



This individual was a baby, who'd flown a nest built in the side of a rusting JCB-type digger, which was a particularly cool nest site and something I didn't take full advantage of with the photos. What I did take advantage of though was the approachable nature of the bird at hand, if you look at the eye you can see the hillside reflected there...



I also found a rather attractive one in Suburban Argentieres (if it has suburbs, I mean its smaller than my local park), part of a family of three youngsters being fed by an adult. This was particularly cute but never happened close enough to me for a shot, so I made do with some portraits...



That characteristic upright chat stance...



Anyhow a lovely bird and one particularly close to my heart. Next time I won't do a bird at all, but I will do the closest thing to one... :D

'Le Animaux des Alps'- The Crag Martinis

Baby birds often have different names to their parents, like goslings. Or pufflings. So why don't we extrapolate the trend to include the world's favourite Hirrudines; Crag Martins?

Yea so I figured, given that I was quite close to Italy, I would add 'i' to the end of the word. So young Martins are actually 'Martinis', and no they weren't in the least bit shaken by my presence. Nor were they stirred.

They had in fact just fledged, but being lazy they'd only got as far as the shutters below the rafters they came from. So I climbed a wall to watch what is one of the fastest food passes in nature. They're very quick. So what i've done here is accumilated the shots from 2 or 3 passes and laid them out so you can see the intricacies of an act that can't take more than a second. So the parents must be pretty awesome flyers. First the wee baba starts to call. A lot...



...Then the adult comes in, like a little missle (Missile? Doesn't even sound accurate!)...



...Then the food pass, notice the baby seems to be concentrating on something else...



...then over and out...



...and the great thing is this was taken all taking place as the people bought their bread underneath. They must've thought I was mad...

'Le Animaux des Alps'- Fur coats and Handbags

Or 'The Life and Times of Luis Suarez', he's the most obnoxious little bastard at the moment isn't he? Still, let's not dwell on such things, let's move onto an altogether more appealing little rodent...no not Danny Alexander ('Ginger Rodent', according to Harriet Harman. Pretty funny for an MP to be honest) but the rather adorable Alpine Marmot.

I like to think of them as terrestrial beavers, they're about the same size and have quite a few resemblances in the way the body is made up. They're one of those staples of the upland grasslands, a bit like...err..grass? But they're a bit more dynamic than grass, and they're quite comical at times. Especially with their rather comedic lolloping gait...



...but the most interesting thing about them is their social structure. They have a matriachal female who breeds on behalf of the group, harrassing the other females into miscarrying (bit grim eh?) so as there's no conflicting interests. They also have sentries too, who'll stay out the burrow and make amazingly loud whistling noises until the others are safely tucked away...



...and as for any queries as to what they eat...



...see what I mean about the beaverishness...?



...and the 'handbags'...



...and enjoying the vista in the harsh morning's sun...



...and an amazingly close pair, sitting out on a rock in the afternoon...



...you could just cuddle them, couldn't you...?

(but you wouldn't would you? They've probably got icky little lice and rabies and mingin' stuff like that.)



...yea they're pretty awesome animals...



..but that's yer lot, I can't be bothered editing anymore. So next time we've got some lovely wee boidies for you to look at, cant be having with all these mammals... :)

'Le Animaux des Alps'- Goats on the Edge

When the Spanish Armada sailed in the 1600s the crew, being a forward thinking bunch, packed not simply just food but also livestock. In fact, they took with them a huge number of goats. This meant that when they were pushed north, they took the goats north too. This meant when the ships were wrecked off the Scottish coast, the goats were wrecked too. Goats are famously hardy, so there's now a sizeable feral population in localised areas, such as Colonsay.

These are now seen almost as semi-wild, and it is testimony to the hardy and adaptable model that is the Goat's body that they can thrive in so many different environments, including central Manchester where they make a delicious curry. But aside this they have also colonised the high mountains, including the Alps. In fact there are two Goat species in the Alps, the Chamois and the Alpine Ibex, the latter being larger with huge sexually dimorphic horns.

And to live up high they have to be expert climbers, if only there were some way of conveying how sure-footed they were on scree and boulder, perhaps some kind of well-known phrase? Alas I cannot think of one, but suffice to say that south of Croix du Bonhomme there is a steep slope of gravel and muck, and i've seen an Ibex climb it...



...Yep that preamble really was just to get to the idea that i've seen an Ibex. Well I'm quite excited about it so that's pretty brief, in comparison to what I want to say about Ibex. Next question is 'did you get any photos, Joe?' Answer: 'Hmmmm...define 'photos' '. What I mean by this is that the Ibex arrived at the Col at teatime. As a storm set in. So photography wasn't a real option.

Not close up, anyhow. That shot before was of one we chanced upon on our way up to Bonhomme. I think I best explain what Bonhomme is first, its a refuge. Which basically means its a hut which has beds and food in it. And imagine our surprise as, half way through tea, four Ibex appeared on the horizon. It was speckling rain and the sky was the colour of the slate beneath my feet as I clambered up to get a view of the goats. An idea came to me; what about Black and White? Well I switched onto full BW and shot a couple of frames...



...not bad...but i'd much rather be closer to em! But still there's something vaguely atmospheric about these types of shots, at least they kinda show off the hardships of life in the high mountains...



...and in a way i'm quite pleased with these shots, so I returned to my food with renewed gusto...



...next time, some shots of one of my favourite small rodents (and its no longer Luis Suarez!)

'Les Animaux des Alps'- An Afternoon with Brian Chough

I got a wee confession. I don't speak French. At all. I don't mean i'm bean all self-depricating and modest, I literally cannotstring a sentence together in a coherent fashion, so it may surprise some peopel that I absolutely bloody love France. Partly cos I don't even have to try to explain what the hell i'm doing crawling along the road, or lying in the mud, or sitting on someone's land when I ought'nt to be, or the list could go on. But it won't.

But I really like France for the meadows. But Joe, I hear you ask in my head (I should probably get that checked out), we have perfectly good meadows here don't we? But you're wrong, so wrong. You haven't seen a meadow if you ain't seen the ones of the continental hills, meadows as far as you can see, as far up the hills as they go (OK up to the snow line).

And so when my family decided to do the Tour de Mont Blanc I was prepared to fight tooth and nail to get my camera gear into our modest allowance of stuff to carry. It was always going to be an ask for me to take a full DSLR camera kit, so I stripped it back quite a bit, just to the 'bare essentials':

Canon 50D
Sigma 120-400mm
Canon 18-55mm
Extender tubes (c.100mm)
Milk-bottle Diffuser

And so the stage is set, the players cast and my rucksack altogether more heavily laden than it has any right to be. Let the TMB begin! Wait no, we won't do a conventional chronological report, that'd be boring. Besides, introducing the creatures of 'la montagnes' one at a time will allow for more elaboration. Yes, i'll do that. And I'll start with my favourite of all the alpine birds, the Alpine Chough...



Chough, for me at least, evoke hours of waiting patiently waiting on the paths at South Stack for one to happen upon me. They are accomodating, incredibly so at times, though I find that when I actively try and approach one they're less complient. I think it must be something to do with their intelligence, they know when they're being stalked.

But this time I found them, or rather they found me. On our way round the TMB they were one of the commonest birds we encountered, often flocking up in excess of one hundred birds. However, my first extended views of one up close were at Col du Bonhomme (Bonne Homme? Good Man? Maybe 'Gentleman'? Says the guy who doesn't speak French), as one spiralled up from the snowy, glaciated valley below...



...but the refuge at Croix du Bonhomme (the 'Cross of the Gentleman'? Could the 'Bonhomme' be Jesus?) proved to be far more fruitful for these charasmatic birds. They're strictly monogamous and bond for life, which can be seen in the way you either see family groups or pairs. Here below the refuge the Chough had learned to take food, so I could watch them flying away or in to feed their babies. Their squabbly, raspy tones became a good indicator of an incoming bird...



...now i'm something of a BiF puritan and a pedant; birds in flight should, in my view, be against an interesting backdrop. That means I don't like birds against a brilliant blue sky. But as the stormclouds rolled in for the night that mix of shiny black and dulled greys combined with an afternoon sun prompted me to take a rare 'bird against the sky' shot...



...and as the 'exception that proves the rule', here's another one...!



...and as the light fades you've only got one option; go all arty-farty. Well these birds are really quite acrobatic, perhaps I should add a photo that emphasises this point...?



...some people will have just have inadvertently dribbled on their keyboards in awe of the sheer artiness and unprecedented fartiness of that shot (go wipe it up before anyone sees it), others, like me, consider it an abomination and don't consider it a 'proper' photo. So they you have it, a perfect storm in a teacup.

But believe it or not these birds do spend some time on the ground, not that you'd know from my meagre photographic record. But they do, and I can prove it...!



...Lovely flowers too. But over much of Choughland (as I've renamed the Savoie Alps) the terrain is a little less rich, as this portrait kinda shows...



...or this one...



...but some Chough are tamer than others and the birds at Lac Blanc were the tames i've ever encountered. I'm just saying 55mm and soft cheeses, nothing else...



...actually sod the cloak and dagger, these birds came in on our picnic and in true stingy British fashion we allowed them the rind of some cheese to eat. This lead to some utterly privileged views...



...with the Lac in the background...



...in flight, again its against the blue sky but I excuse this with the crazy trippy sun in the top left...



...back to the wide-angle stuff, with the Massif du Mont Blanc in the background...



...and to end it all, a bird with Lac Blanc in the background. These birds have pretty much made my summer, I am (to quote the wee aliens in Toy Story) 'Eternally Grateful...'