Starlings and scatterbrains
Watch out if you’re walking around les Allées and la place de la Victoire in Béziers at the moment. They’re fast becoming “des zones à risques“, according to Midi Libre.
The newspaper headline suggests a major aerial bombardment has begun: “Les étourneaux sont de retour… tous aux abris!” The starlings are back … everyone to the shelters!
Each year around this time the starlings gather in this part of the Languedoc before starting their great migratory exodus across the Mediterranean.
Check out a wonderful photo on Flickr of starlings in Béziers from this time a year ago. It was taken by Paul Grand, who has plenty of other wonderfully atmospheric pictures from the Hérault. Or here’s a video from Nice, again from this time last year…
The starlings gather in huge clouds of ten to twenty thousand birds, and that means a wonderful sight as they weave their mesmerising dance in the skies.
The overall shape of the flock may be incredibly fluid and complex, yet scientists have found that each individual bird obeys very simple rules. Isn’t nature wonderful? Think of it as nature’s equivalent of the Tour de France.
“It sounds an awful lot like cycling in a racing peloton, but with the addition of altitude between the racers.”
- comment on Birdsandscience.blogspot.com
Meanwhile for some humans there are more “down to earth” problems. These big flocks also mean a good deal of noise – and a lot of droppings. So all kinds of methods are attempted to scare them away, from rockets to sirens and even buzzards, but nature is too resilient for all that.
In the early morning the giant flocks arrive in the vineyards to forage for the remaining grapes. In French they are called les étourneaux. But un étourneau doesn’t just mean starling – it has connotations of birdbrains, scatterbrains, featherbrains.
Perhaps it’s because they get a little tipsy from the snifters of alcohol inside the wrinkled raisins.
Étourneau cocktail
And perhaps it’s no coincidence that l’étourneau is also the name of a very obscure cocktail.
Mix 1.5 fluid ounces of gin with 0.75 oz of yellow chartreuse and 0.5 oz calvados. Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Top with 4 oz sparking wine or champagne. Enjoy.
Hot posts:
RSS - all posts
