Yes, pigeons and sparrows aren’t the only birds that enjoy life and food in the City of Lights. Gulls do too. Though not permanent residents, gulls can be seen congregating on Paris holiday between early summer and late winter on their way to/from northern or central Europe on the one hand and the Atlantic or channel coast on the other.

Paris has, as yet, been spared the kind of gull attacks against cats and small dogs that have recently been reported in Nice (from bigger seagulls). Between Paris’s tasty insects, not-too-toxic fish and the delicious trash, who needs a meal of yorkie (one was reportedly lifted from the beach in Nice and devoured at sea)?

In Paris we can take in the sight of these frolicking feathered friends without fear, for now, whether in July, as in this video that I shot in the Marais:

or in December, as in this video that I shot from a bridge over the Canal Saint Martin.

© Gary Lee Kraut

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By Janet Duignan

I didn’t think I would miss the snow last winter. Usually a sun lover, the mild weather here in the Dordogne was particularly disappointing because I was on the lookout for the return of a very special visitor to our garden from the previous year.

Since arriving in France nine years ago, I have thoroughly enjoyed the variety of species of birds that have visited us. During the unseasonable week of snow the previous February, it was obvious that the wild birds were suffering, especially those that were not adapted to take advantage of the variety of foods we left on the feeders. As the snow melted, a patch of grass appeared in our south-facing garden. And I was astonished to find, when I looked out of my window one cold morning, a large bird with an enormous beak pecking through the thawed but still hard ground for worms. It was a woodcock.

Not only had I never seen one before but the bird itself must have been driven to desperation to come out of the woods that give it its name and forage around in broad daylight as they usually feed in the evenings or at night and are carefully camouflaged to make them very hard to see in leaf matter. I kept quite still in order to spy on this unusual visitor; they have large eyes placed high on the sides of their heads giving them 360° vision. The beak is twice as long as their head, which is why the French name for the bird is bécasse or “big beak.” They are a bit bigger than wood pigeons and sound like a frog when they call, croaking followed by a sneeze.

Unlike some of my French neighbors who like to hunt, I knew that I would rather find out more about this beautiful bird than pick up a gun and shoot it for the pot. I can’t even keep chickens because, just as the Red Queen told Alice when she went through the looking glass, “It isn’t etiquette to cut anyone you’ve been introduced to.” The hunters use dogs specially trained for this type of game, with bells on their collars; they find and point to the birds before flushing them out. The French Woodcock Society (Club National des Bécassiers) specify a bag limit of 3 birds per hunter per day to a total of 50 per year. Its motto is “Hunt as much as possible while killing as few as possible” (Chasser le plus possible en tuant le moins possible).

Woodcocks have been hunted for food for centuries, with recipes appearing in medieval times. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Cottage fame recreated a Ten Bird Roast for a medieval-themed feast. He starts with turkey and stuffs it with goose, duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and, last but not least, woodcock.

Elizabeth Raffald, when writing The Experienced English Housekeeper in 1769, included a recipe for A Yorkshire Goose Pie which also involved a turkey, two ducks and six woodcocks. No bag limit in those days, then.

At least there is no wastage when eating Woodcock as almost every part of the bird can be eaten, except for the gizzard, eyes, beak and feathers. It seems that they empty their bowels before flying, which means the bird can be roasted with the intestines still inside. When removed and added to the cooking juices with a small glass of Armagnac, a dash of lemon juice and seasoning and then flambéed, the resulting sauce was said to be so delicious that, in his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, published posthumously in 1873, Alexandre Dumas Père felt he had to write a warning. He said that, when serving a ragoût of roast woodcock, in a recipe called salmis de becassins des bernardins, it was essential to provide forks to prevent the guests devouring their sauce-covered fingers.

Another delicacy was the head split open in order to eat the brains.

Guy de Maupassant in his 1887 book of short stories Contes de la Bécasse (Woodcock Tales) tells of a dinner party game played with the head of a woodcock pinned to the cork of a good bottle of wine (once drunk). The head is spun around, a bit like Spin the Bottle, until it stops and the woodcock’s bill points to one of the diners, who is announced the winner. The prize is the privilege of eating all of the woodcock heads but at the cost of having to tell a story to the others while they sit by the fire smoking cigars and drinking brandy. The trick, as a good host, was to be careful how many good bottles of wine were served before getting to the game, to ensure the winner’s tongue was loosed enough to make him capable of telling a good story, without being too drunk.

Mordorée is another name for woodcock in French, so perhaps the ideal wine for these occasions would be the Châteauneuf-du-Pape “La Plume du Peintre,” an expensive special reserve with a 16.3% alcohol content from the Domaine de la Mordorée. Wine Advocate (N° 173, Oct. 2007) described it as a limited cuvée which “is meant to age for 40-50 years. From a specific site in one of the appellation’s most hallowed sectors (La Crau), this wine’s level of concentration, richness, extract, and harmony are almost beyond comprehension. With beautifully integrated acidity, tannin, and alcohol, it is a monster wine the likes of which are rarely seen today.”

La Plume du Peintre, the painter’s feather, is in fact the name of the little pin feathers. Only two of these are found on each Woodcock, on the leading edge of each wing. Shaped like the head of a spear, they are so fine that they are used by artists for very delicate work, for example by Renaissance painters to paint angels’ hair and Victorian artists who specialized in miniatures. Perhaps when Claude Monet painted his Partridge and Woodcock in 1872 he used the Plume du Peintre for the fiddly bits.

The impression I am left with, after researching the woodcock through history, literature, cuisine and art, is that I am just looking forward to the next snowy winter and the hope that I might once again see an unexpected visitor rummaging for worms in a small patch of thawed grass.

© 2014, Janet Duignan

Janet Duignan is a British writer and journalist living in Dordogne

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The Gates of Enfer

By Andrea Bates

 “The gates of enfer. That’s the gates of hell, right?”
-overheard in the garden at the Rodin Museum, Paris

They say it’s other people’s children,
not wanting what you’ve got, blood
on a white shirt, lost chances you were
too scared to take. And in France?
those who do not speak the language
languish for days in an enfer
of their own making—tongue studded
with syllables it cannot pronounce,
chest heavy as Rodin’s gate, heaving
in its attempt  to ask for a spoon
to savor the sorbet sold at the garden’s
stall. Yes, to try to curl the tongue
around cuiller brings tourists
to their knees, is to abandon all hope,
ye who enter here, is to watch
sorbet melt into a pool of sweet
bitterness in its cup, is to leave it
as an offering, what the dead can
drink, thirst bronzed by the heat
of Rodin’s ironworks, love’s
unrequited vowels of ici, here,
Paolo reaching for Francesca’s hand,
only to grasp the parched air.

Roulé d’aubergine au chèvre

By Andrea Bates

Lettuce dine with fork and thyme, pears flambé
on a plate appear to satisfy the palate, but only if
we first salut the salad. When dining a la carte in Paris,
the entrée is the appetizer, so the appetite
should be as crisp as frisee that chevres the spine.
Chaqun a son gout, a phrase planted on the purple-
egged tongues of aubergines. On top, olive oil drizzled
as gentle as pluie sweetening the cheeks on a stroll
down the Champs-Elysees. A glass of merlot and voila—
the miel is complete—like honey at the table, baked eggplant
stuffed with warm, warm goat cheese on a bed of greens.

MADAME’S CAFÉ OF THE GOURMET HAND

By Andrea Bates

“All the pigeons of Paris are dead. Some have been eaten, which is natural,
but most of them have been condemned to death because they carry messages.”
 –Monday, Jan. 19, 1942, TIME magazine

She is old enough to remember the Occupation,
backyard butchering of pigeon, twist of the neck,
a stuffed pie to feed eight people, tablespoon of meat,
dressing of parsley, and carrots smuggled in
from the countryside. Her mother didn’t tell her
it was pigeon–she would have cried and ruined
the dinner, but decades after the war ended
and her mother was dead, she discovered the recipe alive,
written in her mother’s shaky hand, cached inside
an envelope at the back of a kitchen drawer. A clipping
also of Notre Dame, stained glass rosette removed,
preserved in a secret cellar where prayer would protect
from the MP40, submachine gun, trigger finger of the Nazis.

The bombs these days are laid by pigeons, eighty thousand
strong, waggling throng of grey as if pieces of the Parisian
sky have fallen. She greets them with a plastic bag of seed
and crumbs she’s wiped from dinner tables and abraded
from day old loaves, seasoned with dried parsley
and thyme. Some believe there is no rhyme or reason
to this mission, others do not forgive the blast and drop,
residue of feather, purge of seed consumed. Every bird
is a victory, every bird she tends is one less she must
remember eating. Now, her outstretched palm beckons,
Café of the Gourmet Hand feeding the flock near Notre
Dame, each pigeon perched on the iron rail, awaiting
its turn to receive what she cannot bear to throw away.

Andrea Bates’s first chapbook, Origami Heart, was published in Toadlily Press’s 2010 volume Sightline.

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He has a beautiful backyard, full of all kinds of trees and plants and a vegetable garden and a chicken-n-pigeon coop where he raises birds such as chickens, pheasants, and Texan and Hubbell pigeons.

I like visiting his backyard because I don’t have one of my own.

I see Turkish filberts from my window but no ginkgoes or beeches or pines, as he does.

I see pigeons, but none like this, none I would want to hold.

Then we’ll have lunch, if possible with something from the garden, like the zucchini that’s plentiful right now or those cherries earlier in the month. And perhaps pigeon.

No, just kidding, we didn’t eat one of those beautiful pigeons on Sunday. We ate rabbit.

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