If you look at Strasbourg Cathedral from the square, you may see a common kestrel hovering above, or even a few crows playing on the slide on the copper roofs of the nave. But how can we imagine that this Gothic building, among the most visited in France, houses an entire ecosystem? ? That, from the spire to the basement of the Saint-Laurent chapel, passing through the passageways and the cloister garden, buzzards, hawks, hawks, barn owls, long-eared owls and sparrows sleep, play, hunt or nest ? As if this space of 6,000 m2 Vosges sandstone was, for birds, only a natural rock and cave site.
This “ wild cathedral »Cédric Chambin and Pauline Bugeon reveal it in a documentary produced between 2021 and 2022, released in cinemas and recently accessible on the Salamandre platform TV. Equipped with a camera, these two Strasbourg residents surveyed the building with curator-restorer Mathieu Baud to document the species it houses (birds, but also insects, small mammals, flora), and compare this survey with that carried out by the naturalist Ferdinand Reiber in 1882. The opportunity, for these three “ ornithofous »to make this poignant investigation into urban biodiversity a manifesto for effective protection of species.
Mathieu Baud, the curator who has watched over Strasbourg Cathedral and its wild inhabitants for more than twenty years.
© TIME Production
A journey at bird’s eye level
There is so much poetry in this film that we forget that it is a documentary. First we discover the habitat of birds and mammals as if by surprise, with the trio of investigators, who we follow to the most incongruous places in the cathedral. Lovers of the azure (it only hunts in the air), the peregrine falcon has, for example, installed its pantry in the spire, among gargoyles and stone archangels, 100 meters high. A little further down, a swift sneaks, we don’t really know how, inside a tiny bolt hole – one of those used to secure the scaffolding during the construction of the building.
Prolonging the enchantment of discovery, the cameraman’s varied frames take us on a journey at bird’s eye level. Panoramic or low-angle views simulate those of a bird hovering or swooping on prey, just as the rapid vertical rises along the sides of the cathedral and the fixed shots on the ornate perches immerse us in their perception of space . There is childhood found in Wild Cathedral : like the cameraman, the excitement of the black redstart will perhaps make you laugh.
A black swift emerging from a log hole – see how little space it takes to get through.
© The Blue Cloud/Alain Mauviel
To this camera used for four months in a piecemeal manner – with the aim of seeing both migratory birds (triple-banded kinglets, swifts, etc.) and sedentary ones – the directors added camera traps in various places on the site , between 2020 and 2021. The inventory thus gradually reveals a rich ecosystem, with its operating logic. Plume-Blanche, the local peregrine falcon, hunts the pigeons, whose remains the field mice will perhaps eat, while the curious crows remove all the rubbish accumulated in the water channels.
Invisible now, the jackdaws, swallows, sparrows…
Despite this “ natural regulation », despite the laws passed since the 2000s to stop the erosion of biodiversity, the massacre continues. And in this “ azure oasis » what was Strasbourg Cathedral for Ferdinand Reiber, the rock swallows and jackdaws are now invisible, just like the sparrows, whose population in the city has fallen by almost 90 %.
Faithful to their ambition to make the voices of those involved in nature protection heard, the two directors, with Mathieu Baud and experts such as Olivier Steck, specialist in raptors from the Grand Est, open a salutary reflection on the reasons for this carnage and the means to slow it down.
A wood pigeon poses on one of the cathedral’s animal gargoyles.
© The Blue Cloud/Alain Mauviel
If the reasons for this are increasingly known (the disappearance or poisoning of food resources, an unprecedented housing crisis), what we measure less, perhaps, is that between regulations and uses, there is an abyss. Even protected species, such as swifts, have to suffer from the human mania for filling in holes in facades, often to block access to pigeons – the clever ones still manage to slip into certain bolt holes in the cathedral, because between the filling coating and the stone, 6 to 7 centimeters are enough. But every summer, organizations like the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) rescue thousands who throw themselves from the roofs of cities where they have retreated by default, suffocating under the heat waves.
Why not install more artificial nest boxes, and use contraceptive dovecotes, as is already practiced in Cologne and other cities, ask the protagonists of the film ? Why still impose harmful standards on living things, such as protective nets during restorations, which trap bees, without asking how to protect them? ?
Cathedral, “ a representation of nature »
As in their second documentary, which recounts, among other beautiful battles, the saving of an important avian migratory route in the Jordan Rift Valley, the directors demonstrate that it would now be possible, with a little institutional will to translate this into action. regulation, and desensitization to “ false beliefs persist in the collective unconscious », to protect both heritage and wildlife. And it is hardly surprising, once the film has been watched, that Wild Cathedral received the Nature Protection Prize in 2023 at the Ménigoute International Ornithological Film Festival (in Deux-Sèvres).
But, they argue, has the cathedral not been the best advocate for animals since its construction, between 1176 and 1505? ? Pigs, sheep, dogs, bats, stone storks are they not the stars alongside the saints and Noah ? “ The cathedral represents nature, in all its generosity, all its dimensions: animal, plant. The cathedral is a representation of nature. We live in a world, we all have to live together, and the cathedral is that »insists Mathieu Baud, who echoes the philosopher Baptiste Morizot, analyzing the ecological crisis as a “ crisis of sensitivity ». By the way, it’s true, wasn’t the Holy Spirit himself incarnated in a dove, that is to say one of those white pigeons that we treat so badly today… ?
Wild Cathedral free access:
After two days of free access, on May 18 and 19, the film will remain visible on the Salamandre documentary platform. TV. You will be able to benefit from 10 % discount on the annual subscription to see it or rewatch it (only subscribers can normally rent films on Salamandre TV).
