A Buzz in the Meadow (6 page)

We tried to ignore the rattle of shots and carried on with our work. On that morning I was helping the roofers, the three of us perched on the ridge of the building, from where we had a fine view in all directions. The wack-wack bird, which had been calling every day previously, had sensibly fallen silent. We spied a party of hunters heading along the green lane at the northern boundary of the meadow. There were five of them, each armed with shotguns and with several dogs gambolling excitedly around their feet, ready to collect the carcasses of any animals that their owners shot. As the hunters reached the nearest point along the lane to us, perhaps 150 metres to our north, one of the dogs put up a red-legged partridge. These are lovely birds with cream-and-chestnut barring on the sides of their breast, and this one was particularly plump. It took off with a clatter of wings and a squawk, heading towards us. One of the hunters swung his gun to follow it and fired two shots in our direction. After a second's pause, lead shot rained down upon us, its force largely spent, but nonetheless causing us to scuttle for cover behind the chimney pot. The bird must have been clipped by one of the shots, for it crashed to the ground in a puff of feathers, but then picked itself up and ran for it. One of the hunters pushed through the hedge and set off in pursuit.

I was hopping mad, both at being shot at and because the hunters were clearly intent on exterminating wildlife on my intended nature reserve. I shinned down the ladder and ran towards the hunter, shouting and waving my arms. I'm not sure what I was shouting, but in the heat of the moment I had lost all my flimsy command of French, so I'm sure it made little sense. As I got closer I realised that the hunter was a stout woman of late middle age, wearing one of those hunting, shooting and fishing waistcoats that has hundreds of pockets for ammunition, knives, and so on. She even had a bandolier of shotgun cartridges slung diagonally across her chest. What I didn't immediately notice was that her tweed cap was covering a pair of ear-defenders, which would explain why she didn't hear me shouting. She was still intent on her prey. Her dog had run ahead, and suddenly the partridge took to the air again, rather wobbly this time, and she swung her gun and shot it. It was at close range, and the creature was obliterated. I was shouting very loudly indeed by this point, and finally she heard me and swung her gun in my direction. For a moment I thought I was going to get the second barrel. Thankfully she was able to tell the difference between an angry Englishman and potential dinner at such close range and didn't pull the trigger. We had an interesting and somewhat heated debate, during which I attempted to marshal enough French to explain my indignation, while she shrugged repeatedly and seemed bemused by my anger. The dog, meanwhile, had retrieved what remained of the partridge and in a gesture of goodwill she offered me the ragged, dripping, shot-laden corpse. I declined, and we may or may not have agreed to differ as to whether it was acceptable to pepper someone with lead when sitting on the roof of their own home. She departed to resume the slaughter, and no doubt later to recount the tale of the mad Englishman who had moved into Chez Nauche. The next day I nailed up ‘
Chasse Interdit
' signs along the farm boundaries.

There were many other moments of excitement on that trip. At intervals my power tools burst into flames, which was none too helpful. We were still using some of the rudimentary ancient wiring, including cloth-covered (rather than plastic) wires – something I'd never seen before – and we eventually realised that the problems only occurred with two particular sockets. I later discovered that, due to a quirk in the wiring, these sockets were delivering twice the normal voltage: highly dangerous to both power tools and humans.

By the end of a fortnight I had a house with a waterproof roof, a few windows (and rather a lot of gaping holes where windows were needed), a working toilet and electric lights. It all looked dreadful, but it was slowly approaching being habitable, in the loosest sense of the word. We had got through an awful lot of cheese and red wine, but it seemed worth it.

It wasn't until the following spring when, accompanied by my dad, I made my next DIY trip to Chez Nauche that I realised the mistake I had made in filling in the hollow. I noticed that the rubble we had thrown in was now inundated with water, which fed in from a ditch running down the side of the drive. What had been a dry hollow in summer was clearly a pond in winter and spring. Newts have to have a pond to breed in – they go to them to mate and spawn in early spring, and then leave them again in the summer. The truth dawned uncomfortably upon me. The hollow that we had more or less completely filled with rubble was in fact a temporary pond – in winter it filled with water, but by summer it was dry. There were no other ponds in the thirteen hectares at Chez Nauche, so I had successfully destroyed the only breeding habitat for these lovely creatures. Given that my aim in taking over the farm was to create a wildlife sanctuary, this wasn't an auspicious start.

The obvious thing to do would have been to dredge out the rubble. I cannot recall why I initially decided against this. Instead, I hatched a plan for a much larger replacement pond, which I would create by damming the stream flowing from the small spring in the meadow. I reasoned that I could dig out a substantial lake in the valley below the spring. I envisioned an expanse of wind-ruffled water sparkling in the sunshine and reflecting the clear-blue Charente sky, with fish turning, perhaps the odd heron, and many happy newts frolicking in the shallows.

My initial thought was that I would perhaps get someone with a digger to scoop out the lake, so I asked around among my limited local contacts. I eventually found a chap by the name of Marcel who came to look at the spring and, if I understood him correctly, declared that he could create a fine lake. However, his quote for the work, when it arrived by post a few days later, was for 7,000 euros, which would have made it the world's most expensive newt home. Plan B was to dig it out by hand. After all, the Suez Canal was dug by hand – how hard could it be to make a small lake? I figured that the spoil heap could be used to create a mighty dam across the valley. And why stop at one lake? I could have a whole series, with the water spilling attractively over a series of weirs from one to the next. In my head, it was a marvellous scheme.

So it was that, on subsequent trips to France, whenever I had a spare moment I would dig. There are always lots of other things to do, making the house more comfortable and looking after the meadow, so the digging wasn't a top priority and it went slowly. I initially made three dams about fifteen metres apart, each strengthened by several wheelbarrows full of stone rubble carried down from the partially demolished barn. The soil in the valley is heavy clay and full of flints, so it is exceedingly difficult to penetrate with a spade, and when it dries in summer it becomes as hard as concrete. The only way to make any inroad at all was to hack at it with a pickaxe, and then shovel up the loosened soil – blistering and back-breaking work.

By 2008, despairing of ever seeing the mighty expanses of water that lurked only in my imagination, I decided to organise another work party. At this stage I was at Stirling University, and I invited down a group of friends to dig. It might not seem like the most attractive prospect, travelling 1,600 kilometres to dig a hole in the ground, but one should never underestimate the appeal of the offer of unlimited supplies of French cheese and wine. Five of them volunteered, all staff from the university, and so we formed a chain gang, hacking away at the hard earth and taking it in turns to bring more stone down from the barn. We focused our efforts on one lake; the dam slowly rose, and the hole widened. It was September, and the sun shone from a cloudless blue sky, as it tends to do at that time of year. It became hellishly hot in the hole, sheltered as it was from any hint of a breeze. After a week of dusty toil and blistered hands we had a cavity perhaps two metres deep, six metres wide, and nine metres long. It still wasn't really going to be enough to go boating on, but it was considerably larger than the hollow I had foolishly filled in up near the house. It should certainly be big enough for quite a lot of newts. However, it had been a dry summer and not a drop of rain had fallen during our stay. The trickle of water from the spring petered out before the hole, sinking into the parched soil, so I guessed it would not fill up until the autumn rains set in, as they usually do. We shut up the farm for the winter and returned home.

The following spring, on my next visit, I ran down to inspect the pond. I was sure it would be full, with perhaps a few frogs and newts, water beetles, pond skaters, and so on. As I jogged down the hill I recalled how quickly the pond I had dug as a child in our garden in rural Shropshire had been magically colonised by a host of fascinating aquatic life. Imagine my disappointment to find the hole largely unchanged. There was a tiny puddle in the bottom, perhaps forty-five centimetres across, and one solitary frog, which ineffectually attempted to hide in the few centimetres of water. It had clearly not been a very wet winter, for the meadow grass was shorter than usual, but this was not the cause of the problem. A mole had, quite literally, undermined all our hard work. The lower face of the dam was dotted with molehills, and the steady trickle of water coming down from the spring was pouring straight through the mole tunnels and under the dam. Why the mole should have chosen to dig here, in the bottom of a stony hole in the ground, when there was a whole meadow of softer, worm-rich soil for it to burrow around in was beyond me.

I battled with that mole for the next two years. I puddled clay to a thick, smooth consistency and poured it into his tunnels, hoping that it would dry and set hard. The mole was undeterred and every morning new molehills appeared. I rammed rocks down all of the holes, stamping them in with my feet and sealing around them with more clay, but the mole just popped up elsewhere; every morning two or three more molehills would announce his stubborn resistance to my attempts to drive him away. In desperation I mixed concrete and lined the inside face of the dam with it, but before it could set each evening the mole pushed holes through it, leaving a pile of crumbled cement and newly excavated soil. I began to empathise with the American soldiers in Vietnam, ineffectually trying to flush an unseen enemy from its underground network of tunnels and bunkers. For all my efforts, the hole remained just that, home to a solitary frog and, of course, a mole.

It was not until the spring of 2012 that I finally won this battle. Perhaps the mole simply died of old age and, if so, I imagine that he had a smug, satisfied smile upon his furry pointed face when he went. The weather may have been what turned the tide, for the late winter was exceptionally wet, and the water from the spring flowed as strongly as I have ever seen it, perhaps flooding the mole out of his network of tunnels beneath the dam. The torrent of water had washed mud down, silting up the deepest part of the hole and perhaps blocking up the tunnels, although there were still a few leaks. Whatever the cause, when I visited in May 2012 the pond was full of water, nearly reaching the top of the dam. What was even more exciting, it was alive with creatures. Several frogs leapt from the banks as I approached, plunging into the cool depths. Whirligig beetles gyrated on the water surface, perhaps having flown up from the pools on the meandering Transon nearby. Pond skaters skittered about, disturbed by the frogs, and water boatmen rowed their way jerkily along beneath the surface. Damp-loving ragged robin had appeared from nowhere and was flowering on the bank, offering a perch for dozens of damselflies, including both common red and blue-spots. There were no demoiselles, for they seem to prefer running water. But there was a blue chaser dragonfly perched on a dead thistle stem hanging over the water, a lovely species with a fat blue body with a powdery bloom like a plum, and powerful, fast flight. I couldn't resist it, and quickly stripped off and jumped into the pond, causing quite a stir amongst the whirligigs. There wasn't really room for much of a swim, more of a muddy wallow, but it was wonderful until I noticed a lot of coypu faeces floating around me, which slightly took the edge off the experience.

In
The Field of Dreams
, a strange and rather dull movie about baseball, Kevin Costner is advised that ‘If you build it, they will come.' I'm not sure this is generally useful advice, particularly if moles are involved (so far as I recall, no moles attempted to thwart Kevin's efforts in the film, although it might have been more interesting if they had), but it is certainly true of ponds. I would recommend that anyone who has a spare corner of their garden should consider installing one, because there is no doubt that it will soon be teeming with insects and, if you are lucky, with a few amphibians too. It is the one single addition to any garden that will make the biggest difference in encouraging wildlife. Sadly, the only creatures that have not yet arrived at my pond are the newts that motivated its construction, but I live in hope. Every spring I check for them with my boys, using our pond-dipping nets to dredge out any that might be lurking in the depths, but as yet without luck. I am sure that, given time, they will come.

CHAPTER FOUR

Mating Wheels and Sexual Cannibalism

9
May
2008
. Run:
39
mins
6
secs. A little faster today – perhaps the marathon training is paying off! People:
2
– a rare sighting of young people in Épenède, a little girl walking to the postbox with her mother. Dogs:
4
. Butterfly species:
11
, including dainty wood whites fluttering demurely in the shaded lane along the south-west edge of the meadow. I also came across a hedgehog out for an early-morning snuffle, or perhaps on its way home after a busy night of chomping worms. I love their rolling gait, reminiscent of an old man with a gammy hip on the way back from the pub.