Jonathan Kemp; A naturalist in the south of France

    The time of year, mid-autumn, is the time when the vulture team has to do some housekeeping. Not in our kitchens, but around the nest sites of the French vultures. We would, no doubt, all be divorced if we only cleaned our kitchens once a year. The Egyptian vultures ( Fr. Vautour Percnoptere ) have all left on migration to Africa about mid-September, and there is a short window before the Bearded vultures ( Fr. Gypatete barbu) start bonding back together. Even the Griffons ( Vautour fauve) are beginning to show interest in nesting sites, even though they are not going to actually start mating and laying until early Springtime.  For the non-nesting (in the Aude) Black vulture ( Vautour moine )there is work to be done – but I will come to that later. So to start with the gypas, as we call them.  They will choose a territory, refurbish the nest, repeatedly mate and  then lay the egg. One year a pair laid an egg even in November, but that was unusua...

An Alpine Ibex   Deep inside an Ariège mountain, about an hour from the Mill, is a cave that I think of as a womb; it is called la Grotte de Niaux. The 800 metre walk from the surface carpark half way up the mountain is through windings of labyrinthine complexity; sometimes wide subterranean river-gouged caverns  (these caves are always found in limestone country, which is a water soluble  rock) sometimes tight passages where you have to be careful not to knock your head. The small group, never more than 25, inevitably talks in hushed tones; to be in such a place elicits a sense of awe.   The entrance to the Grotte You are, of course with a competent guide, often an archaeological student. I have been several times over the years and they are always knowledgeable and engrossed in their subject. They stress, however, that there remain many aspects of the ingress by humans there that will never be completely understood. Niaux, and the other examples of pre-histor...