The birds live numerous on the plateau. During our last walk we saw them, flying in groups. They form these assemblies especially during the winter, to seek for food and to protect themselves. During adversity, together, one is kept warm, but also one is less afraid. We act in the same way.

In these bands, if we really had a good ear for music, we would notice in the chirping, accents of the north. The finch, the goldfinch, the robin, the titmouse, might come from Belgium, the Netherlands, Scandinavia or more simply of the high plateaus of the Auvergne. They will set out again before the end of the winter. The wildlife authorizes the emigration when the famine and the cold threaten.
It is in this period that certain males start to sing. They delimit a territory and attract a female, the period of love begins in cold mornings. Little by little, with the passing of the days leading to spring, the males are taken by a foolish frenzy, they do not hesitate to exhibit themselves with their brand new feathers, the sparrowhawk benefits from this imprudence while emerging from the foliations where he was lying in wait, to crunch the scatterbrain.
The blackbirds whistle before the start of the day, then with the growing light, the songs fill up space in company of the rising sun. On a wire, straight up, the head bent backwards, the bunting constantly repeats a stubborn refrain of metal being crumpled and bouncing. The greenfinch is perched on the summit of a tree, his song alternating between an old electric bell and the trilles of a virtuoso canary. The titmouses have a very varied repertory, which they interpret without ceasing seeking their subsistence; one has to believe that they can sing with their mouth full. It would make a long list to enumerate all these birds here. But here are two easy to recognize. First of all the tune that one hears in the trees of wood or the thickets. Reading out loud in a jerked manner the following "words": tsip/ tsap/tsip/ tsup /tsip. In English that gives chiffchaff. If we retain this curious monotonous chant in memory, we later can guess the chiffchaff which bawls in the trees.
And the lark “lulu”, so characteristic of the landscapes of the plateau. “Lulu” is an approximation of its song. With us, one of most beautiful. A succession of melodious sentences and soft whistles: lilililuyluylu... tlyui, tluyi, tluyi... ilui, ilui, tuylluylluyll... vi, vi, vi. We will have more difficulty with this interpretation than with the preceding one. But it being repeated there, even in hiding, in order not to worry its close relations, allows one to recognize and to taste the song of the nice lark ; and one has to withhold himself not to step out into the open.
The plateau continues to fill itself with smells and songs. Disorderly smells and songs. Life abounds, carried over the ground and through the air, it is at this time that return also all those which have spent the season of the winter sports in Africa. They are the great migratory birds. It is not their size which allows for the qualification "large", it is the voyage to and fro which they accomplish each year. A ball of feathers with a score of grams in it, like the nightingale, crosses Spain, the Masher, the Sahara Occidental, reaches Senegal, and the countries of Western Africa, but others can go on still further, towards equatorial Africa and even Southern Africa like the cuckoo or the rustic swallow.
By rising very early, even before the sun, we really settle in the middle of a polyphonic choir. Moreover while remaining motionless, we have the chance to see them more easily, their mistrust yielding under the exaltation. It is thus, with this return, that the swallow, and with it other celebrities like cuckoo, hoopoe, nightingale, oriole, trip hammer, announce spring to us. It also knew there, discrete or rare.
The warbler of Bonelli, the turtle-dove of the woods, the gray flycatcher, the goat-sucker, the tree pipit, these we can only hear and notice them. It is necessary to placed oneself on one of these fields with close-cropped vegetation, the time of day is of little importance, even after midday, when the songs of the other birds lose their intensity a little, the pipit, it does not slow down its rate. One quickly notices a bird which sings, well in sight, in top of an isolated tree. With our approach, it flies away almost vertically, then it descends again in a slow spiral both wings spread to perch itself hardly a little further, while remaining visible, in the top of a tree. Not one moment it ceases singing. The pipits not being rare on the plate, one has the right to consider their song monotonous at the end of a certain time.
One also cannot ignore the small-duke. It is a small night raptor about of the size of a blackbird. He is the companion of the first warm nights. When one is still late outside to look at the stars or to do nothing in front of the door one can hear a sound round and soft "tiou... tiou... tiou... etc" with a few seconds between these syllables. There are also those of which one can be proud, they became so rare elsewhere. Bouloc and its meadows of thin grass are still appropriate to them, thus we "have" the bunting ortolan. Very shy, one needs good binoculars to be likely to see it. But one can hear it easily, its voice carries rather far.
Lastly, there are the visitors who regard the plateau as a tray meal. The short-toed eagle, a raptor of beautiful scale, speckled white with a black head, comes to hunt grass snakes or lizards which it sees from very high on the bare terrain. The swaying flight, a few meters above the grain, characterizes another raptor, the harrier, which comes to collect voles. The list is not closed, and each one of these birds reveals a particular way of life. One could speak about it for hours, and still discover new things. This diversity corresponds to that of these landscapes where human activities opened a world without opening the ground.