Wildlife to see in France in October
9 spectacles at their peak in France in October, and 5 more still going on. Wild animals only: no zoos, no wildlife parks, no hunting. Open France in October in the interactive calendar for listening times on the day you pick.
At their peak in October
Brame du cerf in the mountainsRoars echoing between forested slopes with 3–4 s of valley reverb; several stags on opposing slopes answering each other.
Brame du cerf — the great lowland forestsStags roaring across flat oak forest and heath — long, resonant bellows, antler clashes, hinds and calves moving; tawny owls between the roars.
Cranes at Lac du DerTens of thousands of cranes bugling as they leave the lake at first light in wave after wave, then the evening return with the sky full of trumpeting skeins.
Autumn falls & nocmig on Ouessant and SeinRedwing and song thrush flight calls all night over the lighthouses, dawn passerine falls in the stone-walled fields, and shearwaters and gannets streaming past the headlands in a westerly.
Baie de l'Aiguillon: wader roosts and winter geeseThe roar of 20,000 dunlin and plover lifting off the mud as the tide covers it, godwit and curlew flocks calling as they cross the dyke, wigeon whistling by the thousand on winter mornings, greylags at dawn and, in December, cranes bugling in to roost over the marsh.
Banc d'Arguin terns & Arcachon brent geeseA grating Sandwich tern colony of thousands of pairs on a sandbank in the Atlantic swell; in winter, the rolling 'rronk' of brent flocks on the eelgrass beds.
Iroise: grey seals of Molène and Sein dolphinsSeal moans and pup calls from the reef islets, a resident bottlenose pod around Sein and Molène, and the Iroise swell — France's most oceanic soundscape.
Pyrenean passes: raptor, stork, pigeon & crane migrationMostly visual, but woodpigeon flocks pass with a rush of wings, cranes bugle over the pass, and pre-dawn passerine flight calls stream through — with gunfire from the neighbouring hunting passes.
Cap Gris-Nez: seabird passage through the Dover StraitA visual passage — skuas harrying terns, gannet lines, scoter strings — above the one great sound of the place: the Channel breaking on the rocks 50 m below, with kittiwakes and the Gris-Nez foghorn in sea fog. Overland, meadow pipits and finches stream past calling on October mornings.
Also going on in October
Wintering cranes at ArjuzanxWaves of cranes dropping into the flooded roost after dark, a continuous rolling chorus that carries for kilometres over the pine plantations.
Flamingo colonies of the CamargueGoose-like honking from thousands of birds, the massed 'marching' displays, and flights of hundreds passing low over the étangs at dusk.
Baie de Somme: harbour seals & wader roostsSeal pups bawling and adults grunting from the sandbanks at 300 m, oystercatcher and curlew roosts, and spoonbills clattering in the Marquenterre heronry.
Fin whales & sperm whales off the Côte d'AzurWith a hydrophone: sperm whale clicks and codas, striped dolphin whistles and the shipping lane behind. Fin whale 20 Hz pulses need a hydrophone with real LF extension.
Vulture cliffs of the Jonte, Verdon and OssauWing-rush of griffons passing a few metres over the rim, hissing and grunting from the colony ledges, chough flocks and the river below; more a sight than a sound.