[obol] Re: A little out of area: Impressions from a week in rural France and how it might relate to Willamette Valley vineyards
- From: <towhee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: joel.geier@xxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 13:55:28 -0700
Joel,
A great report! From the passing remark about North Dakota, to the
hydrogeology of karst terrain, and especially the observations of the birdless
vineyards. My Mother's family settled in the Neckar valley of southwestern
Germany, and in my several visits to this wine-producing region I had the same
observation--a birding desert. The experiences brought back memories of Rachel
Carson's classic, Silent Spring.
Good birding,
Mark
Mark A Gonzalez
Bend, Oregon
----- Original Message -----
From: Joel Geier <joel.geier@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Saturday, June 28, 2014 7:36 pm
Subject: [obol] A little out of area: Impressions from a week in rural France
and how it might relate to Willamette Valley vineyards
> Hi all,
>
> This is wandering a bit afield, but it was interesting for me, and
> hopefully for a few of you as well.
>
> I spent the past 10 days in France -- four of those days in Paris and
> Lyon, which I would not recommend for birders, but the other six
> days in
> the Haute (Upper) Marne region which I would gladly spend another six
> years exploring.
>
> My visit was focused on the hydrogeology of this karstic region, where
> whole rivers disappear into limestone sinks, and then later
> reappear --
> perhaps even in a different valley. In this environment, and in our
> modern interglacial climate in which permafrost regions have retreated
> far to the north, rainwater tends to sink straight into the ground,
> creating perfect conditions for a grassland. I thought that I was back
> in North Dakota, except that the road signs were all in French.
>
> A long while back, I stopped keeping track of my life list, whether in
> Europe, North America, or elsewhere. I've spent perhaps 10% of my 50
> years in Europe so even when I visit, "life birds" are rare. However,
> most of my time has been in the Nordic countries, and I've never spent
> significant time in SW Europe at the peak of breeding season.
>
> So it was fun to see some birds that I've never seen before such as
> Little Grebes, tending to their young on a river that I was tracing
> fromsource to finish, alongside of Gray Wagtails which I've seen
> only a
> couple of times in Sweden, picking food out of a rushing flume that
> probably dates to Gallo-Roman times.
>
> A little side note, the Swedish name,Forsärla literally means
> "rushing-stream wagtail."
>
> Somewhere I've seen a quote by a famous physicist to the effect
> that if
> you know the name of a bird in all of the languages in the world, you
> still know next to nothing about the bird. That is incorrect, even
> if it
> comes from a very smart guy who knew a lot about subatomic particles.
>
> If you know the name of a bird in all of the languages of the
> world, you
> can start to understand how different people in different cultures
> perceive the same birds. That accumulated wisdom sometimes tells
> you a
> few things about the bird.
>
> As a simple example, Russians on a train crossing Siberia will
> point out
> a raven as "varon" while crows are "varona": little ravens. Swedes
> lovethe name "skata" which as a single word applies strictly to
> magpies, but
> in a more general sense applies to any bird that makes harsh calls
> suchas the "Snow Magpie" or snöskata (more properly Björktrast or
> BirchThrush, known to British birders by the name Fieldfare which
> presumablyrepresents the expected habitat where they see these
> birds in winter).
>
> But I digress, and then I digress from the initial digression as
> well as
> the secondary digression ...
>
> While meandering through the uplands of France last week, the main
> thingthat I noticed was an impoverished assortment of birds,
> despite that we
> were in one of the more diverse agricultural regions with wheat,
> barley,corn, rapeseed, and the occasional herd of Charolais or
> Holstein cows.
> As bad as that was, things got a lot worse when we dropped down
> into the
> heart of the "Champagne appellation region" along the lower Marne
> River,where vineyard spray rigs were nearly as numerous as
> passenger cars from
> the wine tourists who flock to this region.
>
> At most stops I could pick up a Chiff-Chaff singing from the nearest
> riparian patch a couple of kilometers away, but when we stopped in the
> middle of vineyards, there was an astonishing stillness even
> compared to
> the wheat & rapeseed fields higher up. There at least I'd hear a few
> Song Larks and see a few old-world warblers dropping down into the
> fields from nearby forests and brush. But the industrial-scale
> vineyardsin the heart of the Champagne region were simply silent.
>
> The expanding Willamette Valley wine industry tends to be well
> receivedby birders, since -- let's face it -- most of us like to
> drink a glass
> of good wine now & then. Vineyards also score much higher on the
> coolness index than, say, grass seed farms or dairies.
>
> However, if Oregon's wine industry expands to a scale similar to the
> wall-to-wall grape situation that I witnessed in the Champagne region,
> my hunch is that we'll be seeing a lot fewer birds in the Willamette
> Valley.
>
> Good birding,
> Joel
>
> --
> Joel Geier
> Camp Adair area north of Corvallis
>
>
>
>
>
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