Château Beginnings: Chapter 8
Musings from the Turret: My family and other animals: A wedding week heatwave and we find a surprise in our chimney...
This week is a very busy wedding week at Château de Bourneau as we prepare the grounds and château to host a beautiful wedding weekend for a lovely couple in the middle of an unexpected heatwave. Given the unremitting heat that has arrived out of nowhere (I was wearing woollies only a few days ago and now it’s climbing to 38C in the middle of the day) we have been starting our long days much earlier in the morning to tackle the list to avoid being cremated alive in the midday sun.
All château plans have a tendency to be interrupted by the daily curved balls thrown liberally in our direction and yesterday morning was no different. As I ran down the long list, my breakfast was interrupted by squawking coming from somewhere inside the château kitchen. JB wondered if it was just the usual transmitted sound echoing down the chimney from our corvid friends having their usual heated debate on our chimney pot in what we surmise is some kind of bird daily council meeting. It often involves a lot of raucous shouting and then some of the party storming out of the session in a huff. A sort of bird version of BBC parliament, if you will.
However, this time, the squawking seemed louder and closer. Suddenly, our second-in-command cat, Henri, was getting deliciously excited beside the kitchen log burner. It all went quiet and then a startling thud onto the chimney platform made us jump and we realised that somehow a bird had managed to get between the tubing of our log burner and the chimney and then fall 16M onto the fireplace platform that seals the chimney space around the log burner. We didn’t know how long the poor bird had been trapped there but what we did know was that the long list of daily tasks for the wedding week had once again been bumped down the list as JB realised he would now have to take apart the log burner installation, which was definitely not on the plan today. Henri and Oscar got temporarily escorted away (to avoid more delicious thoughts) and JB got embroiled in a job he really didn’t need to do that morning. Half an hour later, I suddenly found myself presented with a weak, blue-eyed fledging, blinking at me through a puff of soot and fluffy feathers.
My level of ornithology is shamefully poor, and I am certainly no vet, but this is not the first time I have had to research the local fauna and learn how I can revive or feed an abandoned baby animal. Unfortunately, in rural France, we don’t have the plethora of wildlife associations or veterinary services interested in helping wildlife in the same way as what I was used to in the UK, so over the years, I’ve just realised that I have to try and step up to give these poor creatures some chance of survival.
Bats in the Belfry
My usual required medical services relate to our protected bat population who tend to hang out (literally) in our medieval cellars and sleepily exit through the air vents to eat insects around the moat. I am pretty sure that it is partially thanks to them that we never have a mosquito problem here in the height of summer. However, bats can get quite easily dehydrated in summertime, due to their large surface area from their wingspan, and so it’s not uncommon for me to find a partially conscious tiny bat that has face-planted and is splayed on the floor like they’ve splat-landed. Rescuing a dehydrated bat has become a routine admission for me in my bat intensive care unit. I pick them up with thick, vet-handling gloves and transfer them to my ICU and gently rehydrate them with a syringe and then it’s breakfast in bed. It is always such a delight seeing these dying creatures suddenly back to hanging upside down again from my ICU and then I know that they’re feeling much better and will have a swift discharge back to our cellars where they hang out between the wine racks like all good French.
They rarely bother us inside the château, unless the windows have been left open on a summer’s night or the one particular bat, who we called Bruce (of course) who seemed to have found a rather cosy nook hanging upside down on our curtain rail in our bedroom. We probably wouldn’t have noticed him napping behind the velvet 4.5M up if it wasn’t for his reduced nasal passages. I kept hearing this regular high pitched “eee-ah-eee-ah” sound coming from somewhere and on investigation, I found it was just a snoring bat and we let him stay as a resident mosquito guard.
In the Red Salon, the occasional circling bat certainly adds to the gothic atmosphere with our austere portraits as they circuit the room. One of our friends rushed to tell us that one of the portraits “was moving” and of course a thrill of the supernatural ran through the group only to find that a bat (probably Bruce again) was camping behind a frame and had just dislodged it.
As a Londoner, living in rural France has been such a wonderful discovery for me and has also highlighted my countryside ignorance. I still have this childlike amazement at all the wonderful flora and fauna we have at Bourneau. We have a barn owl that roosts at the château and who made his appearance known by a 2am shrill welcome shriek on our first ever night we spent at the château:
You can read about that here:
Every morning we awake to an orchestra of birdsong or the corvid parliament on the roof and the evenings bring the Nightingale’s lullaby. Red squirrels still live here, hedgehogs regularly stroll by at night and I’ve seen yellow flashes of regal salamanders hiding in piles of leaves. Many of you enjoyed meeting JB’s golden pheasant friend on instagram the other day. He calls him Super Pheasant, due to his superhero mask-like markings, and he joins him most mornings and evenings when he hears the sound of JB’s tractor and comes running with his chatty squawks.
There’s a wading heron that dips in our moat looking for breakfast every morning and our forest is home to deer, hares and wild boar. We have thousands of fish in the moat, including Angus the rogue goldfish who hangs out with shoals of carp. We also have a pair of ducks that only ever seem to visit during French school half term, timed to the literal day!
There are also many animals and creatures I have never seen before in my life. I once saw what looked like a giant squirrel run vertically up a wall and I thought someone had spiked the rosé until JB told me it was a “loir” which is some naughty roof-nesting kind of rodent. We once had un ragondin living in our moat that we called Rasputin (also a naughty boy) who nonchalantly swam around the moat and looked me dead in the eye with a sassy, complete disregard to our presence. He liked to excavate our medieval moat wall, which wasn’t ideal, until one day he moved house and is probably now happily destroying one of our neighbours’ lakes instead.
I even love how the slugs here are ginger and not grey. They make me laugh every time (not that I have any issue with gingers) but because they are so surprising to me.
Our first year, we suddenly had a garden full of mini-frogs that materialised out of nowhere, as if one of the plagues of Egypt had resurrected just before our high season. We found them bounding around all over the lawns and a group of them then somehow arrived inside the château. I found them hanging out in a random plastic crate that had been left in one of the forgotten rooms (which I soon discovered served the important purpose of collecting the toilet water that was leaking through the ceiling) but they were enjoying splashing around in it like it was some kind of hammam. Well, at least some folk around here were delighted by this disastrous discovery.
There is such a distinct seasonality of Nature as well here from the call of the cuckoo heralding early Spring or returning swallows, to the darting lizards and susurrations of cicadas that usher in the heat of summer. It’s like a new soundtrack that someone just switched on one evening. And then we have le brame du cerf, which is the bark of the rutting stag, calling for a mate. Its throaty echo resonates through our forest like a deep melancholic sigh, abruptly confirming the seasonal shift to Autumn, if a long, Indian summer had you doubt it.
Even the insect life here fascinates me and returns me to child-like awe when I see a marching lines of red “gendarmes” which are a kind of red and black beetle that I think are so beautiful. We’ve had a swarm of bees checking out our chimney for a new hive. I’ve seen Stag horn beetles and a preying mantis for the first time, dragon flies, funny caterpillars and hairy millipedes plus numerous rainbow species of moths and butterflies floating around our wildflower meadow. I once saw what I thought was some child’s LED toy left out in the garden which actually turned out to be a glowworm.
They are all a part of the fabric of our home that we share with such diverse and wonderful wildlife, which is why we are so careful with the home and garden products we use to maintain our happy, organic ecosystem.
And so here I am in the middle of a heatwave on wedding week with a million tasks to do sitting on a roof with what I think is a baby jackdaw. I spent my evening reading about corvids, what they eat and their intelligence and parenting. Many kind people from all over the world reached out to me on instagram with such thoughtful advice and links and I have learned a lot from feeding this little guy every hour(!) who seems very happy to hang out with me and at the cusp of learning to fly. He also has quite bougie tastes- so far prosciutto and strawberries seem to be a firm favourite and we did also have scrambled eggs for breakfast. Apparently, jackdaw parents will look for their lost fledgling and will continue to feed them until they can fly and forage for themselves. So, after some rehydration we went to sit on the roof (away from my mini-tigers) to see if his caws alerted his parents. It struck me that this is another one of those “château moments” and how we too are part of our own funny ecosystem. I started playing a YouTube soundtrack of jackdaw “chat” to try and get the baby to talk more and overhead, a swoop of possible jackdaws seemed alerted and were casing the joint. I hope the YouTube recording wasn’t anything rude in jackdaw but I felt such a thrill of possibility that this mad plan might actually work so I quickly left my little friend with some snacks and hid, so his parents might dare to go to him on the roof. I popped back an hour later to see an adult hopping along the roof and had to restrain myself from whooping with joy but crossed all my fingers and toes that my little rescue was now “flight ready” to join his people again.
Meanwhile, I got back to the tasks at hand, scrubbed stairs, moved furniture, collected laundry and darted between scorching sun and dappled shade in this unremitting heat. Finally, I went back to check on my friend, that you all named in a vote as Jacques D’Or, which I think is exceptional!
I have been hoping all day that the adults hadn’t rejected him and had found the snacks and taken him under their wing (literally). A similar wedding week 2 years ago, we ended up accepting a cocktail drinks invitation that resulted in us coming home with a dirty abandoned kitten that wasn’t yet weaned. I had to syringe feed him between the arrival of the bride and the champagne reception, which wasn’t the most convenient moment to adopt a kitten, but Henri has grown up into a longhaired handsome boy who is the naughtiest but also the cuddliest little chap and very much part of our family. Was this history repeating? Would I now be that mad English woman with a hand reared jackdaw sitting on my shoulder? I returned to the roof. The snacks were gone and so far, it looks like we did it and my little friend, Jacques D’Or, has rejoined his family.
This evening, the jackdaws are soaring over the château and calling to each other and I wonder if I can hear that little peep demanding prosciutto now he’s back on the chimney stack where he belongs.
Best Wishes from Château de Bourneau,
Erin, The Intrepid Châtelaine
PS
Do tell me what you would like to hear about next. How about a series on The Burgundy Diaries about my time at JB’s family organic farm before we found the château? Or more recipes or French tips? I’d love to hear your suggestions.
Missed my other posts? You can check out my archive here:
I’d really love to hear more about JB’s family farm and what it all entails! ❤️
Yes I’d love to hear about life at JB’s family farm in Burgundy before you found your Chateau 💕