Rural riddles
Jeremy Hobson solves more of your pastoral problems Watch the birdie!
CURIOUS ABOUT LA CHASSE
in France – we are always concerned for the welfare of our cats which wander far from home on occasion. In previous issues, you seem to be on the side of the French hunter… why, when judging by various reports, there seems to be an abundance of shooting-related accidents in the French countryside? We are not being confrontational – just curious! Jennie and Alex Allen
Q A Tree sparrows are in need of conservation Q
At a local farm, we see sparrows picking up
grain spilled in the yard as the tractors go back and forth at harvest. Unsure as to whether they are house sparrows or hedge sparrows, we wondered how they feed when such largesse isn’t so readily available. Bearing in mind from what we see in the media, that sparrow numbers seem to be decreasing, is there anything we can do in the way of practical help? Robyn Sayers
A
In such an obviously rural environment, possibly
what you are seeing are tree sparrows. What some refer to as a ‘hedge’ sparrow is actually a dunnock, according to various bird-spotting organisations are a different family of birds altogether. Tree sparrows are considered to be in need of conservation and their numbers are of concern in several areas of Europe. A farmland bird, they prefer hedgerows, boundary trees, small woodlands or pollarded willows along slow-running streams and ditches. Farm cereals and over- wintered stubbles provide
UNUSUAL BLUEBELL A
‘non-seasonal’ inclusion into the September/
October Rural Riddles is this – a query which, like that regarding the sycamore seedlings opposite, also came to me in April – from Patricia Hadley who discovered a rather unusual-looking bluebell in the woods around what she describes in her email as her “maison secondaire in French paradise!” and asked to know
much of their food but if your location/situation allows you to do so, you might like to try establishing a wild bird mix plot of seed-producing plant species. If you have thick hedgerows, don’t cut the vegetation by them as that will help grass seed heads to develop and encourage insects on which young tree sparrows are dependent. Should you happen to be
talking to any neighbours about such things, in French, the house sparrow is known as moineau domestique; the tree sparrow, moineau friquet.
Yes, fatalities are reported in the news – some
in the most unfortunate circumstances such as a couple of years ago when a cyclist on a mountain bike trail in Morzine was shot dead by a hunter who allegedly “mistook him for a deer”. Bad news sells newspapers so incidents such as this always make the headlines and one might be forgiven for thinking they
The hunting season will soon start again
Hunting for an answer
happen more frequently than they actually do. Perhaps the reason that there
are occasional accidents is that there’s more public access to land in France to ramblers, foragers etc and also by members of the local chasse. Although shooting in the UK
more. The extra foliage at the top of the flower is certainly unusual but it does look to be a native bluebell, rather than an example of the (undesirable to some) Spanish variety – which has a much broader leaf. It is always possible that the
two types might occasionally combine to produce a hybrid but, in this instance, I think it most likely to be simply a freak of nature.
104 FRENCH PROPERTY NEWS: September/October 2023
can only be done on ground which one owns, or has specific permission to shoot, in France, it seems the commune groups have more freedom. Unlike the UK though, French hunters must have a permis de chasse – for which they need to have passed a practical and theoretical exam. They are also legally obliged to have appropriate insurance. Sadly, despite all that, accidents will, it seems, happen.
© T. VOEKLER/CREATIVE COMMONS/CC BY-SA 3.0
© P. HADLEY
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