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The Cévennes 4 – 13 June 2010

Birds

If there is an iconic bird of the region, it is the griffon vulture, thanks to a highly successful reintroduction programme. Craggy cliffs of the gorges also provide nesting sites for choughs and golden eagles. The open, rocky causse landscape offers productive feeding for short-toed eagles, harriers, shrikes and wheatears. Woodlands and scrub echo to the song of nightingales, joined at nightfall by churring nightjars. Around villages, the song of serins and black redstarts may be heard, and the air is alive with swifts and crag martins.

Flowers

Nothing can outdo limestone for the richness of its flora. Grassland is white and yellow with rockroses and fragrant underfoot with wild thymes. Roadside screes are pink and blue with rock soapwort, fairy foxglove, flax and aphyllanthes. On granites and schists we find saxifrages and cinquefoils; in the rich meadows, wild tulips and narcissi.

There are orchids too, a wide range of species, some in great profusion: carpets of lesser butterfly orchids among feather grass, banks of early purple and elder-flowered orchids on damp streamsides. Lady, monkey, man and military orchids are abundant (and hybridising!). There are two endemic Ophrys species.

Other wildlife

European beavers have been successfully reintroduced into the river Dourbie, close to our base. A herd of the rare Przewalski’s horses has been established on the Causse Méjean, in a habitat akin to their native steppes. Reptiles are abundant: green and wall lizards and harmless viperine and grass snakes.We may hear the bell-like call of midwife toads at night. The open scrub and grassland of the causse is rich in butterflies and other insects.

Griffon vulture
(Mika Selin www.birdnet.fi)

Black-veined white on lizard orchid (Ian Barthorpe)

Przewalski’s horses on the Causse Méjean

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