On a recent trip to the France patch, in lieu of many interesting birds I spent a lot of time looking at the many butterflies that could be seen along the lane from the house. For someone based in the north of the UK the 20+ species I found there is pretty bewildering but I really enjoyed the challenge of making correct ID's. Or at least trying to make correct ID's. There are a few too many fritillaries for me to be fully confident... Until the last few days when autumn bird

One of the great joys of spending most of my holiday time in south-west France is that even after 22 years of making visits to this part of the world, it still throws up the odd surprise. I've never managed to record cranes while I've been there. I've encountered them a couple of times (flying over the village just once during daylight hours and overhead at night when I wasn't recording). This is a low hit rate as they pass through the area in good numbers, and are large and

I'm a lucky guy. My other half is French which means that over the years I have got to know a particular corner of South West France very well indeed. Or it's birdlife, at least. And it's food and wine, I guess. You get the picture. We go there a lot and in its unremarkable way it is very lovely. We visit the outskirts of a small village, close to the city of Pau, where it's rural, covered in maize, and life seems to be slow. For a long time my birding ambition with regard to

Sadly this is a sound that has vanished from much of the country. However, Durham remains a stronghold for this species (where,...