Chapter 1: What wildlife can be found in the Camargue region of France?
Now, Niall, you're just back from France. Yes, that's right. And this wonderful sound we're hearing in the background is not a continuation of our signature tune, our identity. It is a chorus of frogs.
It is a chorus of frogs. We often talk about the dawn chorus on this programme. We're getting ready for that now. But birds aren't the only creatures that sing in the mating season. Frogs do. These aren't just annual frogs. These are edible frogs, a species that is known by reputation because it's the original frog that
produce the frog's legs that were widely eaten in France and still are, although they eat many other species there now as well. But they're very abundant in the Camargue. You see a lot of them. They're a relatively large frog and they're quite dark and have a green stripe down their back. So they're really quite dramatic looking and a really lovely sound. But they kind of go in waves.
So that was in the middle of the afternoon.
Chapter 2: What makes edible frogs unique and how are they identified?
I was going through the wetland reserve, this natural park in the Camargue, which is, I should explain this, It's the floodplain of the River Rhone near Arles. It's this huge big wetland, so full of wildlife, one of the jewels in the crown of European wildlife, I would say.
It's fantastic, isn't it?
It's absolutely gorgeous. And I was there mainly to see the birds. But when you're there, you can't help but watch all the reptiles and the horses. The bulls there as well, the Camargue bulls. The horses, as you said, those lovely white horses they have there. It's full of reptiles and amphibians. You see quite a few things like snakes and lizards and birds are the main attraction.
But these frogs, really incredible to see them there. And I just got a kick out of the fact that the name is edible frog. That is actually the speech.
And they occur naturally in the wild. They weren't bred to be edible is what I'm asking you.
So it's really interesting, actually, and I won't go into too much detail about it because it's incredibly complicated. But in terms of their genome... That's what you're here for, to find things. I'll do my very best because it is complex. So it is a full species, but it is a hybrid of hybrid origin between two other species. One is called the pool frog and one is called the marsh frog.
So they're naturalised in the wild. They had a crossbreed at some stage by themselves.
Yes, this is something that happened naturally. And they still coexist with their parent species. And they actually reject a large part of the genome of one of those parent species. And it's incredibly complex. It's only known in this group of frogs, really, that this behaviour happens.
But the thing with them is, though, it means that they're very adaptable to being able to respond to things like drought and climate change. I thought that.
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Chapter 3: How do frogs adapt to climate change and drought?
And then one starts up and then all of a sudden it's this deafening chorus of frogs all around you. And then just on some signal, we don't see it. They just all stop again.
It's just the mating season, yeah, because they come out later from hibernation than does the rana temporaria or common frog. And The story is, and I'm sure it was true at one point, the French who were waiting at the end of the winter for the seasonal food would eat the common frog because it came out first.
And then once the marsh frog, once the edible frog came out, then the one that you were hearing there in France, they stopped eating the common frog because the other fella had bigger, fatter legs. Bigger, fatter legs. That's right.
And obviously the Camargue in the very, very south of France on the Mediterranean coast, it's that bit warmer earlier in the year than it would be in northern France or in Ireland. But it seemed to time with the emergence of a creature that I really don't like to encounter there is the mosquito. I know your favourite, Derek.
We have mosquitoes here.
A creature that eats us, of course. So we're on the menu too. But they are frog food, of course. So it makes sense that the frogs would seem to time their breeding season with the emergence of this amazing food source that's there. So if If you want to experience the Camargue mosquito-free, go in the winter.
It's still full of all the very special creatures you find there, including the flamingos, which are a huge draw for people, but no mosquitoes.
Yeah, I was there in October and there were no mosquitoes. And the flamingos were great. We got up at dawn and they were like flying broomsticks because they're long and their neck is out and their legs are out and they have just wings in the middle and they're like sticks. And against the skylight, all you need is a witch sitting on one end of it and you really would believe.
But they do look like flying broomsticks. But I'm sure when they look pink in the daytime... That's taken away. It is.
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Chapter 4: What challenges do frogs face in terms of sustainability and consumption?
But it's an African species that's colonized there.
or choose to you? Was it just smaller than the others or was it a different colour or pink or how did you know? Was it carrying a sign saying I'm the lesser?
That would make it so much easier if they did that. Which birds did that? No, it is a smaller but it's still a big bird. Like all flamingos are large. There's six species of flamingo in the world. And they're all big and they're all pink. The main difference, though, apart from the size, is that it has an all-dark beak and a dark sort of area around its eyes.
So if you get a good view of the flamingo's head, it's easy to tell them. Unfortunately, they spend a lot of their time with their head tucked under their wings. Or stuck in the muck. Stuck in the muck, yeah. To see them there was amazing. And also, Derek, just the soundscape there, because it's a little further ahead of us in the bird breeding season, there's so many different bird songs.
The dawn chorus is just remarkable down there in the middle of April. And there's this bird in the Camargue here everywhere now called Chetty's warbler, which is a species that seems to be doing very well for climate change. And it's actually a species that is slowly but surely colonising Ireland. So there's a chance we could actually get it in our live dawn chorus programme on the 3rd of May.
It's a species that we know is now breeding in places like Broadratt Charlands East Coast Nature Reserve in County Wicklow. It's breeding in Cahor Marsh in County Wexford and other locations around the country too. And it may be that people don't know what it sounds like or don't know what they're hearing. It's quite a remarkable bird song.
It is a little small brown bird that skulks around in the underground. It's very hard to glimpse, but the song is almost deafening. It's just this explosion of notes. And if you're anywhere near it when it sings, it's impossible to ignore it. It's an incredible sound.
Well, it's a very austere place, the Camargue. I find that the times I've been there, it's either terribly cold in winter and there's cold winds and that kind of thing, or it's blistering hot in summer. It's great because it keeps people out, more or less. It's not a very comfortable place, I found.
Now the Chetty's warblers, when you're wandering along and a bush is ahead of you, when you come to the bush you suddenly get this massive explosion of sound out of the bush, and that's our Chetty. And you really haven't much hope of seeing him, you know, you can try very hard, but he's very hard to see. It's a great little bird, I must say.
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