The Crane Migration
A few autumn nights, under the migration corridor.
Every autumn, common cranes leave northern Europe for Spain. The corridor crosses France from north-east to south-west and passes through the centre, between two hundred and one thousand five hundred metres up. Their call carries four kilometres: you hear them well before you see them.
Prices include tax; tourist tax is extra.
The stay
The passage lasts a few days. No one knows which ones. You watch the sky at first light, listen out at dusk, and one evening the clamour arrives.
They fly in a V or a Y, taking turns at the front, and climb to ninety kilometres an hour with a tailwind. Two and a half thousand kilometres from Scandinavia and Germany. What sends them on their way isn't the calendar, it's the ground starting to freeze.
We organise nothing. No guided outing, no observation point, no schedule. A sun lounger under the linden tree, a blanket, and however long it takes.
Autumn at the estate is also the low light over the meadows, the last squash from the kitchen garden, and the first fire in the stove.