A few days ago, we had an unusual guest while having lunch on the balcony. A robin perched right next to us with insect legs dangling from its bill, and watched us without moving for a while. I didn't move, either (I was sitting under the jasmine, next to the wall), and so we just faced each other for a few minutes. Eventually, it swallowed its ( Read more... )

There are two scops owls nesting near the villa in Hyères where we've just spent the past three weeks. Their cries at night sound like very regular, neat sounds like a practiced flutist blowing one perfect note in their instruments, always the same, every few seconds. You only hear the note grow louder or weaker as the owl flies about. There are ( Read more... )

As I mentioned, I recently visited my brother on his ship, in Tierra del Fuego. In nearly a year, I had talked to him very little, technology being much less helpful than we sometimes imagine. Inside Sonate, it smelled the same as on the day of their departure, a mixture of tar, iron and coffee, although it was considerably tidier than I remembered ( Read more... )

Hope the year is off to a good start for everyone reading this. A few notes from here ( Read more... )

I met my neighbours (mother and daughter) juste outside our building a little while ago. I was trying to set up a nest box for blue tits in the chestnut tree just under our window. Because I like blue tits and also why not. So, my neighbours saw me perched in a precarious position on a tiny stool (somehow evolution failed to calculate that I would ( Read more... )

Cycling around Aix is a breath of fresh air, on so many more levels than the litteral one. The fields alternate with groves of pines and white oaks, there are few sounds aside from birds, and one just has to glance at the side of the road to see more plants than in a whole week working in Marseilles. Then there are the smells, too, those smells of ( Read more... )

The area known as Alsace, a very peculiar place that has changed hands between France and Germany over the course of several wars, is famous in France for being the home of most French storks ( Read more... )

A few weeks ago, two new colonies of emperor penguins were discovered near the Dumont-Durville base in Antarctica. The ice melt apparently cleared a way to the place where over fifteen thousand penguins had their home, and had previously been undisturbed by big clumsy humans. Luckily though, humans today try to be a little bit less big and clumsy, ( Read more... )

A few years ago, my mother and I went to the Alpes for a few days of hiking. We ended up strolling to a mountain refuge, and asking where the paths led from there ( Read more... )

The swifts are back to their nests above our windows. The last few days have been alternately rainy, windy and somewhat normal, which means that I've only been able to watch them dance in the airs at intervals. Also, I'm still chained to my computer, and haven't got around to indulging in ten minutes of doing nothing except watch the swifts fly. It ( Read more... )