P-pick up a Penguin

One of the very best things about Christmas is the way it unites us with friends, both past and present. Every year I look forward to receiving messages , be it in Christmas cards, or by email, it doesn't really matter. A few words will suffice, just to touch base . Even if we don't see these friends from year to year, it's good to know that they are still there and sparing a thought in their busy lives, for me. No! 'Round robins' certainly do not fit this purpose. Whilst they may contain a lot more news, they are just not personalised. Nor do I appreciate those expensive cards that are sent out by some commercial company to a list of addresses; not even signed by the sender! Give me real Christmas cards and personal messages, every time.

"That's all very well," you may be saying," but what has all this got to do with penguins? The answer to that lies with a cryptic message at the end of Christmas greetings that we recently received from an old friend and erstwhile forest neighbour of ours. It merely read:

"Also, Penguins in Sète , I see!

What could this possibly be all about? We had been in Sète only recently , and not heard a dicky bird about this. For sure, had we known, we would have sought out their location, and gone to look.

I well remember the time when, if I wanted to find out about something , I had to look for an appropriate book, and more often than not would have to traipse all the way to a library to find the right one. Not today! Thanks to the brilliance of the internet, I was very soon reading media reports of these very same penguins. And yes! ' Petit Pingouins' had definitely been spotted in Sète. There were hundreds of them , all grouped together on a breakwater in the middle of Sète port. What's more, the internet was buzzing with this story. At least one hundred penguins had been driven by bad weather to shelter in Sète harbour. Reports from the radio station France Bleu ; Midi Libre, the widely read regional newspaper; The Montpellier Gazette; TikTok; Facebook and much more were all reporting this. How exciting it all was.

The next day however, the story was changing. These so called 'Petit Pingouins', were officially known as ' Pingouins tordas.' But they could not possibly be these , a number of ornithologists were now saying. For a start ,these birds normally lie on their stomachs , and moreover these that were spotted were much too tall. Pingouins tordas are only about 40cm. in size. By now I was becoming more curious, and began to wonder what, exactly this species of penguin , sometimes called 'Petit Pengouins,' in France, actually was. The internet gave me the answer straight away. Pengouins tordas, are not actually penguins at all! They are what we know as Razorbills, descendants of the Great Auk. They live on islands and rocky outcrops in the North Atlantic. In winter they may be driven further south by lack of food , and have been known to reach Florida, or the North Coast of Africa. So, I suppose it was feasible that this group of birds were actually Pingouins tordas. However, according to the experts, they were nothing of the sort.

So! What were these actual birds that got everybody talking? They were in fact Cormorants. However I was puzzled. You may remember my recent blog when we crossed the étang. There on the the rocky outcrop, half way between Sète and Bouzigues, we had spotted quite a number of cormorants. This was unusual, for while we do occasionally see cormorants flying low over the water, we never see more than three or four at a time. But then, of course, we do not often use the boat in winter. On that day the weather had been exceptional. But one last question remained. The cormorants that I am familiar with have glossy black feathers. They do not, as far as I know have white breasts.

Ah, but younger cormorants do have white breasts , I have subsequently learned. So, for sure, the birds that got everyone talking weren't penguins at all. They were cormorants. Moreover, as I have only just learned, penguins are only ever seen in the Southern Hemisphere. How pleased I was to have received this Christmas message however. Otherwise, I would never have known of the drama that was occuring in Sète. What a shame,though, that in the event these weren't real or even 'Petit pingouins' at all.