We’re off! We’d like to thank all our followers here, but have decided to leave this platform as we feel it no longer conforms with our ethos. You can find us on Facebook: Merops Field Centre Instagram: @meropsfieldstudies Linkedin: Merops Bluesky: @meropsfieldcentre.bsky.social

We’d like to wish all of our followers and guests a happy new year for 2025. Even in the winter, nature is still thriving here in the south of France. We enjoy watching these seasonal changes, and look forward welcoming our first field courses of the year in the coming spring.

Re-visiting some of the fantastic #orchids we saw on our field trips this year. With our groups, we saw 24 species, including Woodcock, Burnt-tip and Violet Bird’s Nest Orchids, plus the very localised 𝘖𝘱𝘩𝘳𝘺𝘴 𝘢𝘺𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘪, which is endemic to the Grands Causses.

We’ve been very lucky with our camera trapping this year, and students have got some great footage of a family of Eurasian Otters while on their field courses with us. We’ve seen foraging and sprainting, plus this female with two cubs. @StirUni @sheffielduni @univofstandrews

We saw some great invertebrates on our autumn field courses. While it might seem that things are winding down for the winter, this is the time of year when we see the largest invertebrates. They have spent all year growing and are now competing their life cycles.

We’ve had a fantastic autumn field season and would like to say a big thank you to all of the students, their lecturers, and all of our collaborators – not least Chris and Alison Burns at the Chateau du Fraissinet. @sheffielduni @durham_uni @univofstandrews @CumbriaUni

While here for their autumn field course, students from @CumbriaUni carried out some fascinating projects, studying the diversity of aquatic invertebrates, fungi in different woodlands, and the effects of ephemeral waterfalls on wall communities to name but a few @ScanningScience

While on fieldtrips with us, students have had great success camera trapping this autumn. Here is some footage captured by our visitors from @univofstandrews. From one camera, we have two native European Beavers feeding, then later an invasive Coypu for comparison. @mikemwebster

We’d like to say a big thank you to our guests from @CumbriaUni for a wonderful field course. We enjoyed hosting you and showing you the natural history of the area, and were excited to see the real diversity of projects. Good luck with the rest of your studies! @ScanningScience

Yesterday we took our guests from @CumbriaUni for a trip along the Ardèche Gorge. We visited the famous Pont d’Arc natural bridge and took a hike through the garrigue. Highlights were some Red Cage Fungi, plus the resident feral goats that frequent the gorge. @ScanningScience