In late July to early August 2018, we travelled to the Queyras, an ancient mountain range surrounding the Guil River basin in the Hautes-Alpes, south-eastern France. The area lies on the Italian border at the extreme southern end of the Alps, and is famed not only for winter sports and mountaineering, but also for its flora and fauna.
This was a family holiday, so we didn’t have any specific target species, or much idea of what to expect. However, these factors made the whole thing arguably even more exciting and we did well for animals, seeing excellent mammals, fantastic invertebrates, as well as taking in some stunning walks and scenery.
We stayed on the outskirts of Guillestre, in an Airbnb along a stretch of balcony road next to part of the Guil River. When we arrived it was slashing with rain and extremely dark, which are not the best conditions to be driving along an unfamiliar balcony road in. However, after we'd got everything out of the car and settled in the rain cleared, so we went outside immediately to do some evening searching. We encountered large numbers of beautifully-patterned Roman Snails / Escargots de Bourgogne (Helix pomatia) a baby mantis, and large numbers of medium-sized snails with pointed shells, whose species I couldn’t determine.
The next morning, post-storm, the large Buddleia in the car park was my point of interest; we saw Scarce Swallowtail / Flambé (Iphiclides podalirius) feeding in good numbers, as well as many bees and wasps.
That morning, we drove a short distance to the small commune of Saint-Véran, the highest village above sea level in France and the third-highest in Europe at 5,761–10,417 feet; also with its own observatory, which we were due to visit in the coming days. We took a short walk and a few car stops to check the area out. The village is charming, with timber-framed and stone buildings and winding streets. Its name derives from Saint Veranus of Cavaillon, who was famous for (among other things) saving his region in Valcluse from a winged dragon. Coincidentally, this has no relation to the genus name of monitor lizards, including the Komodo Dragon, Varanus, which is instead derived from the Arabic waral (ورل) meaning 'monitor' (according to Varanoid Lizards of the World).
The Alpine meadows and surrounding mountains were buzzing with wildlife, with the most obvious of these being large crickets and grasshoppers, and I caught myself a huge female Wart-biter / Dectique verrucivore (Decticus verrucivorus) from the road verge. The name of the Wart-biter is rather self-explanatory; they were supposedly historically used to remove warts in some places, and are famed for their very strong jaws.
We stopped at the side of the road for a bit of forest walking. As we exited the car, I glimpsed a large brown mammal rush up a small rocky slope adjacent to the road. Thinking it could be a fox or a badger, but knowing it didn't quite look right, I followed it to see if I could catch a better view, at which point it poked its head out of a large burrow and stood up, revealing itself to be an Alpine Marmot / Marmotte des Alpes (Marmota marmota). It was not alone, either; several more were moving about behind it in the hole, and they became a fairly common sight to see after that in the meadows and mountains of the area.
That night, we checked the car park out again to see the night shift at work, and it was even better than the previous day. While the flowers of the Buddleia were too high for us to get decent visibility with the torches, a building across the street had several window boxes full of pink and purple petunias hanging down over the terrace railing. These window-boxes were getting a lot of attention from a group of Convolvulus Hawk Moths / Sphinx du liseron (Agrius convolvuli), looking huge and bird-like from below. Back in the UK, the Convolvulus Hawk-moth is arguably Britain’s largest and heaviest moth, and is still somewhat of a local rarity, despite being common and widespread in the rest of Europe. These ones were an amazing sight, and very strong, too: I used my torch to lure one down and threw my jumper over it in an attempt to capture it, but it crawled out from underneath and took off again with ease.
The trip to the observatory was the highlight of the holiday, spanning two days. We were due to spend a night in the Observatoire de Saint-Véran, one of the highest observatories in Europe, to see some uninterrupted sky and watch the sun come up over the mountains. The trek would be a moderate one, brushing with the slightly increasing altitude (roughly 9,200 feet at the summit), through fertile Alpine meadows and forest.
On the way, we stopped to take in one of the more unusual sights of the area: the Demoiselle Coiffée, or ‘fairy chimney’ (cheminée de fée). This relic was formed during the last ice age, when large, hard rocks (in this case gabbro) were moved by ice sheets and settled on layers of sediment. After the ice sheets melted, the sediment eroded away underneath, apart from the bits underneath the hard rock which had extra protection from the elements. Over time, this created fantastical-looking columns with mushroom-shaped caps perched on top. This large one in Château-Ville-Vieille is the last one standing in the area; there used to be more, and there is also a smaller one forming at the base. Due to the natural erosion happening under the chimney, one day the cap will fall off, and the cycle may start all over again.
Stopping in Saint-Véran in the morning, we allowed all day for the walk, which was convenient as it took us quite a long time to get up there. You can drive right to the observatory of course, but there was so much life on the mountain slopes that it would be a real shame to miss out on it. The trek up to the top was surprisingly tough. We chose a gentler slope with a longer distance, curving around the mountain and up onto the ridge where the building was. It was only an estimated 10 kilometre walk, but the curvature of the hill, the winding road and the hot weather made it longer and more difficult. However, the sheer amount of life in Alpine meadows, even at this altitude, was astounding. There were Marmots tumbling about along the slopes, screaming warnings as we passed and bounding back down into their holes; grasshoppers and crickets buzzed and chirped all around us, and butterflies of all shapes and sizes flew past, pausing only occasionally for a photo.
Here I saw my first incredible and large Apollos (Parnassius apollo), Cynthia’s Fritillary (Euphydryas cynthia) and other various fritillaries gathered in huge crowds around temporary puddles on the stony path, occasionally drowning each other in their haste to drink; there were also large, dark ringlets, a single Common Swallowtail / Machaon (Papilio machaon), Velvet Ants (Mutilla europaea) ambling across the stony paths, at least two species of tiger beetle, Bee Beetles / Clairon des abeilles (Trichodes apiarius), Crepuscular Burnet Moths / Zygène du Sainfoin (Zygaena carniolica) and Silver-studded Blue / Azuré de l'ajonc (Plebejus argus). I can barely imagine what the assortment of invertebrate life is like in May or June, when the flowers are in their full splendour.
1 & 2: Velvet Ant (M. europaea) 3: Crepuscular Burnet (Z. carniolica)
4: Ringlet 5: Tadpoles
6: Mountain Clouded Yellow (Colias phicomone)
1 & 2: Unidentified fritillaries 3: Green Tiger Beetle (Cincidela campestris) 4: Some resourceful ants! 5: Weevil (Curculionoidea)
6: Marbled White / Demi-deuil (Melanargia galathea)
1: A blue butterfly
2: Bee Beetle (T. apiarius) 3: Cynthia's Fritillary (E. cynthia)
We passed a stream full of tadpoles, and at the side of this stream were Fragrant Orchids (Gymnadenia conopsea) attracting a lot of attention from a single Hummingbird Hawk-moth / Moro-sphinx (Macroglossum stellatarum) and several Bedstraw Hawk-moths (Hyles gallii). Bedstraw Hawk-moths are rare in the UK, mainly continental migrants to the south-east of the country, so it was wonderful to see them in action in their natural habitat with their long proboscises. One of them was particularly photogenic, hovering just as adeptly as a Hummingbird Hawk-moth and feeding on the flowers, with the pollinia of the orchid stuck around the base of its proboscis.
As we turned from this wonderful scene, there was a small rustle of wings and a stunning owlfly / Ascalaphe (Libelloides longicornis) alighted on a stalk of grass in front of us.
Owlflies (or ascalaphids) are members of the order Neuroptera, which also contains the lacewings and ant-lions. As adults, most members of this order are harmless, clumsy fliers, sometimes demonstrating pretty colouration and impressive size. As larvae, however, they are formidable and terrifying predators of small insects. Most Neuropteran larvae look fairly similar, with chubby, rounded bodies and a set of huge, curved, spiky jaws. These jaws are weak and ineffective against our skin (not designed to deliver any sort of ‘bite’) but are expertly adapted for grabbing and holding unsuspecting prey. As most people already know, the more familiar ant-lions dig pits in sandy soil and wait for ants to fall over the edge, at which point they are bombarded with sand and dragged under to be consumed by the larva. I had seen plenty of ant-lions, but at the time of seeing these excellent ascalaphids I never once wondered how their larvae looked or behaved.
As we approached the top of the mountain, the vegetation became scarcer and the air seemed to become a bit thinner – I couldn’t yawn properly, and the sun had burned straight through the multiple layers of Factor 50 I'd been diligently applying. There were fewer insects up here too, but the ones that were present were more niche; an endemic carabid beetle, the grasshopper Gomphocerus sibiricus and the Labrador Tiger Moth (Grammia quenseli).
The views were stunning, reaching far over the mountains.
The Observatory was a small complex of buildings, with several snug dorm rooms and a central dining room in the ‘residential’ area. These areas looked newly-renovated, with wooden panelling and insulation – some of the equipment rooms were fairly draughty by comparison.
The Observatory; more info about the observatory and its organizers can be found on the official website: https://www.saintveran-astronomie.com/
Our hosts were excellent; we had a lovely nettle soup for dinner, then had a preliminary look at some sun-spots through one of the scopes, then went to bed. With no relief from the intensifying sunburn, it was very difficult to sleep – I got one or two hours maximum, before we were summoned to the telescope room. During the night, we saw the Jovian system (Jupiter and its surrounding bodies), Saturn’s rings, and some extremely fine details of the moon’s surface, all of which were fantastic and (to me) completely new.
At around 4:30-5am, we got up again to see the sunrise before breakfast and the trek down the mountain. I was told that yesterday morning’s dawn came with a herd of Ibex, but there was no such luck on this morning. The sunrise was beautiful, and the atmosphere was incredible.
The trek down was more intense than the walk up had been. We decided to halve our distance by following a trail that went straight down the side of the mountain back into Saint-Véran, so the inclination was significantly steeper. There were plenty of Marmots on the slopes, alongside even more butterflies; we also stumbled upon a rather ill-looking Chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) lying on some rocks at the base of a small cliff. This we did not approach for fear of stressing it out and potential disease risk, although we had to walk past it on our way. It moved very little as we did so. As sad as it was to think that this Chamois may have been sick or dying, it was interesting to be able to see one so close, even for a short period of time.
Going down is often harder than going up. My legs and feet began to get accustomed to the slope after a while, but when we reached the car they gave way, and I couldn’t walk on them any longer. We arrived back at our room at around 10am, then slept until 5pm. I got up at one point to use the bathroom and found that my legs had turned to jelly, so had to crawl across the floor to get there. That afternoon gave me a level of completely exhausted peaceful sleep that has not been matched since.
After sleeping all day, we could only manage a short walk around the car park that evening, but it was a successful one: as we were admiring a large cricket (Ephippiger sp.) eating a spider out of its web, the light from our torches attracted a clumsy, rustling creature that transpired to be a large and impressive Ant-lion / Fourmillion, the first adult I had ever seen.
The following day, we got up and went out to attempt to find Lanza’s Salamander / Salamandre de Lanza (Salamandra lanzai) in the mountains. This species is endemic to areas of the Cottian Alps, near the Monviso Massif right on the border between France and Italy. Our destination was Ristolas, where a number of mountain walking routes start from.
We passed through a town called Aiguilles, where something in the tourist centre caught our eye: a leaflet with a salamander on it.
The leaflet said: "Help us locate Lanza salamanders!
The Lanza Salamander is an amphibian found only in the massif of Mount Viso, in France and Italy. It is therefore particularly rare and as such, the Queyras and Po parks wish to better understand its distribution and the characteristics of its habitat to better conserve it."
We chatted about salamanders and other local wildlife with the lady in the tourist centre, who also told us that there was a local pack of wolves, which were often seen around the area. Apparently the local people feel quite positive about the wolves.
Tom found a beautiful dead beetle in the car park, which, although we had never seen one before, we somehow recognised. This beetle was a fantastic female of the Spanish Fly / Cantharide officinale (Lytta vesicatoria) perfect in every regard apart from being dead. These blister beetles are famous for producing the substance cantharidin, a toxic compound historically valued for its supposed aphrodisiac qualities, although a quick glance at the dedicated Healthline page for the substance is enough to turn anyone off. Use of the beetle and its cantharidin content have been implicated in several deaths (the majority of them accidental) and immortalised in the media. The BBC crime drama Whitechapel featured the use of Spanish Fly as a murder weapon, although the Spanish Fly beetles shown in a tank during the episode are played by a cast of Fruit Beetles (possibly Chlorocala africana) and Morio Beetles (Zophobas morio)!
We kept the beetle and I card-mounted her - a rather ambitious task which didn't turn out incredibly well. Luckily, I was able to re-relax and subsequently re-mount her several years later, so she looks much nicer now.
In order to reach Abriès-Ristolas we had to take a single-lane detour, which was the longest one-way system I had ever encountered, each way being over 20 minutes to drive (or 20 minutes to wait at the traffic lights). I wondered what had happened to the original road, as it had been completely blocked from entry. As we got back on the main road at the other end, we didn't have to wait too long to discover why: the previous route had been obliterated by a huge landslide, which had sent chunks of concrete fencing and road all over the place in its wake. The Pas de l’Ours landslide (as I later found out it was called) is still actively shifting rock, and as such it isn’t currently possible to repair the road.
After reaching our destination, we began to ascend the side of the mountain on a forest path. It was mild and humid, which drove the mosquitos out in force. The pine trees were laden with lichen, which grew well in the cooler, damper climate. On the way up, we saw several Camponotus ants, with large, chunky queens wandering about over the rocks. Other than these, we saw few invertebrates in the quiet understory. It began raining and some mist set in, which was a perfect combination for salamanders. Still tired and with aching legs, we decided that we couldn't go any further up and sat down (or collapsed) next to a small stream, beside the remains of a sheep. We waited for over an hour as the drizzle intensified, but began to suspect that we had not selected the right place – eventually, exhaustion crept back and we admitted defeat. At one point, we heard some strange noises on the wind as it picked up, which may have been the wolves howling from an adjacent valley.
That afternoon, we ended up in a photo gallery in Guillestre, where the owner told us we had indeed been in the right place, but the wrong altitude: if we had gone another few hundred metres up, we would definitely have seen the Lanza's Salamanders - something to bear in mind for next time! The owner of the gallery in Guillestre had excellent, atmospheric photos of the Queyras and its wildlife on display: https://www.duncanmacarthur.com/
We travelled north on our way back and stayed a few days in Syam (Jura department), in a beautiful little B&B. The area was much lower in altitude, with a different environment - much warmer, more humid, more deciduous, less scrubby and rocky, with a very different mix of animals. On our first night we saw many Striped Shieldbugs / Punaise arlequin (Graphosoma italicum) and a Carpocoris feeding on umbellifers, alongside a large Common Toad (Bufo bufo) and several House Centipedes / Scutigère véloce (Scutigera coleoptera). In the extremely clear waters of the Lemme river we spotted a huge Pike / Brochet (Esox lucius) which must have been over three feet long, swimming languidly and effortlessly against the current. As the sun went down we could hear boar and deer shouting in the woods in the distance.
The next day was particularly hot, so we visited a river and le Grottes des Moidons (Grottes Jura), which was a welcome break from the heat. These caves don't have any associated archaeology, but do have lots of lovely stalactites and bats, which have their own designated areas and information. Plus, it was ten degrees cooler inside!
As the hot weather continued into the evening we went for a walk around the grounds of our B&B, finding more House Centipedes and plenty of flying insects; upon returning, I discovered that I’d accidentally left the windows open and the lights on, which had attracted the most incredible number of moths and flying insects into the room. After ushering out most of the gnats and midges, we returned to the moths, with the star of the evening being a stunning Orache Moth / Noctuelle de l'arroche (Trachea atriplicis).
1: Toad (B. bufo)
2: Striped Shieldbugs (G. italicum) and an impostor 3: Wasp Spider (Argiope bruennechi)
4: House Centipede (S. coleoptera)
The day after, our final day before we headed north to Calais, we decided to visit a local waterfall and river walk. It was still too hot to hike particularly far, but we found plenty to amuse ourselves with at this location. While there were a lot of tourists bathing in the plunge pools, we were staring at the biggest Wood Ant nest I had ever seen: about 3 foot high at its peak. The nest itself was colossal, but what was even more interesting was the way they had modified the area around it: there were paths for the ants to travel down, they were up every tree, and they had all but cleared the vegetation in a very large area around the nest. Nothing seemed to escape their influence. The only other wildlife we encountered around the nest was a small nest of European Hornets / Frelon Européen (Vespa crabro), halfway up a tree around 20 yards away, which were quite placid and allowed us fairly close. There were multiple workers returning to the nest, and what were possibly a few newly-emerged queens or males attempting to get back in, much to the disgruntlement of the ‘guards’, who appeared to be screening every returning hornet and occasionally having loud, buzzing arguments with them.
Upon our return to Calais, we had one night before we were back in the UK again. We had a quick walk on a local beach, which turned up two final surprises. The first was a dead Garden Dormouse / Lérot (Eliomys quercinus), which I was not expecting so far north - it seemed so close to the UK that it's almost plausible they could one day make their way over the channel. The second discovery was a fledgling Kittiwake / Mouette tridactyle (Rissa tridactyla) which had fallen from the nest on the cliffs and was becoming uncomfortable in the sun. After waiting for some over-curious beachgoers (who had been poking it) to move on, I moved it into a more comfortable shady spot closer to the colony which would not become sun-exposed – my good deed of the day!
One of the biggest things I regret during this trip was not slowing down and taking the time to explore around the valley where our accommodation was (along the hairpin roads branching off the D902), and around Ceillac. After looking on Google Maps, I realise that the area had incredible potential for invertebrates, mammals and birds. I would also have liked to have done the walk to the base of the Demoiselle Coiffée from the D5 road. However, you can't do everything in one trip, and it already seems we have some unfinished business here with the near-missing of Lanza's Salamander, and what could have been a half-heard snippet of wolves.
Overall, this little adventure was incredibly fun, and Alpine meadows and forests are now undoubtedly one of my favourite habitats. I wasn't expecting to see Marmots or Chamois, and had good sightings of both, and the invertebrate life was fantastic in the meadows - totally different to the hot, scrubby Mediterranean south. A beautiful and dynamic place to which I look forward to returning!
Invertebrate highlights:
• Ant Lion - species unknown • Bedstraw Hawk-moth (Hyles gallii) • Convolvulus Hawk-moth (Agrius convolvuli) • Cynthia’s Fritillary (Euphydryas cynthia) • House Centipede (Scutigera coleoptera) • Labrador Tiger Moth (Grammia quenseli) • Old World Swallowtail (Papilio machaeon) • Orache Moth (Trachea atriplicis) • Owlfly (Libelloides cf. longicornis) • Roman Snail (Helix pomatia) • Scarce Swallowtail (Iphiclides podalirius) • Striped Shieldbug (Graphosoma italicum) • Velvet Ant (Mutilla europaea)
Mammal highlights:
• Alpine Marmot (Marmota marmota) • Chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) • Garden Dormouse (Eliomys quercinus)