THE WILDLIFE

St. Simon has resident and visiting fauna; those who live here are two cats, Tom and Bean, an adorable little puppy, Ludo, (a recent recruit to the Coleman household), a dozen egg-laying hens... and two humans, David and Liz !

Tom and Bean, siblings, celebrate their 9th birthdays this summer. They are excellent hunters and have solved an earlier problem we had with mice! Carrot, our lovely ginger tom, died in May and is sorely missed.

The hens provide delicious rich eggs on a "when they can be bothered" basis, thus making every freshly poached egg on toast a treat!

The wildlife is fascinating. We are regularly visited by deer, shyly skirting the garden in search of food, there are badgers at the bottom of our track, we sight the occasional wild boar and hares are quite commonplace. Little lizards defy gravity as they scurry up the stone walls while larger specimens bask in the potager. We have toads and frogs and, ever a delight, emerald green tree frogs which clamber in the honeysuckle while emitting the most enormous croaks, their voices far too big for such tiny creatures! We saw a snake once, most likely a slow worm. The area has no snakes worse than an adder - same as the UK.

The birdlife is wonderful, huge raptors circle the skies, including honey buzzards, hen harriers and black and red kites. We have black redstarts and redstarts, hoopoes, blackbirds and crested larks nesting here. We also have families of red-legged partridges nesting nearby. We are visited by many more; clouds of colourful goldfinches, ring plover, assorted tits and sparrows and, perhaps the most dramatic sight of all, huge V-formations of cranes as they arrive and leave their annual stop-over in the Landes. Being on the flight path of several bird migrations makes this region a delight for budding ornithologists.

Insect life at St. Simon can be also be fascinating, if a little disconcerting! The comforting and constant thrum of cicadas contrasting with the somewhat alarming experience of a house centipede, looking akin to an anchovy skeleton, cruising across the bathroom floor! We have amazingly skillful webmasters in the form of segestria florentina spiders in the barn, they weave a starburst trap around a hole in a beam to ensure a plentiful diet, they also pack a bite like a bee sting so are treated with the appropriate reverence.

Grasshoppers and crickets, from tiny to huge, leap about their business and an assortment of wasps and bees hum along to their daily quest for flowers and water.

The potager, where we grow an abundance of vegetables and fruit, is constantly under seige to the gangs of insects hell-bent on destruction! Beautiful beetles dessimate the brassicas, aphids vie for the artichokes and daily "bug runs" are necessary to protect the potatoes from the colorado beetles and their larvae!

The beauties are the large navy blue carpenter bees, the extraordinary humming-bird moths and the swallowtail butterflies - all commonplace at St. Simon.

Fields of sunflowers, rows of vines, duck and geese farms, the beautiful Blonde d'Aquitaine cattle, slow moving rivers and charming pigeon houses all combine to create a stunning mosaic of colour and character.

For information please contact:

Liz Coleman
St. Simon
Mézin
47170 France

Tel:05 53 97 36 98

Tel:(from UK) 0033 55 39 73 69 8

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© Copyright David Coleman.
ISSUE 05: JUNE 2007.