In 1840, the ambitious and then 26-year-old Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax developed a wind instrument that should incorporate all the good qualities of classical musical instruments. That first “saxophone” was a very large one, a bass saxophone with a very deep sound.

Loud knocking on the door of the farm house on the Marais d’Orx, a lake near Bayonne in southwest France. Paul comes to warn us. It has stopped raining, the heavy clouds of that day have broken up and, unexpectedly, hundreds of spoonbills enter the airspace above the Maraix d’Orx, sometimes beautifully illuminated by the afternoon sun.