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Chamois at pasture

Elementary precautions walkers can take are to keep their legs covered when traversing an overgrown zone, and tread heavily. Should someone be bitten, keep calm and seek medical help as soon as possible. Bandaging and immobilisation of the limb are usually recommended in the meantime. Remember that you do have about 30 hours' leeway, and if there is no swelling after two hours, it either means that no venom entered the bloodstream or that it wasn't a viper at all.

Birds and insects

Higher up glide ubiquitous flocks of chaotic noisy orange-beaked crows, more correctly known as alpine choughs. Great chatty socialisers, they appear out of nowhere at strategic cols at the rustling of a plastic bag in the sure knowledge that they will be fed by walkers' crumbs. Their only equals in noise production are the raucous European jays, which flash blue feathers on their dashes through the mixed woods lower down.

Impressive shadows may be cast by golden eagles, who have a field day in spring and summer preying on young marmots and lambs, the scarcity of vegetation making it easy for them. The only competition in terms of territory comes from the largest bird in the Alps, the lammergeier or bearded vulture. Not a hunter itself, it prefers carcasses. It is able to swallow bones up to 30cm in length (digestion then requiring 24 hours!), and is renowned for its ability to crack bones by dropping them from a great height to get to the marrow. With a maximum wing span of three metres, its wedge-shaped tail distinguishes it from the eagle, whose tail is rounded when seen from below. The reintroduction of vultures born in captivity took off in 1986 in Austria and then spread to other parts of the Alps (1994 saw the first actual release in Italy) and sightings are now a frequent occurrence. Otherwise an impressive stuffed specimen is on display at the Chavaney (Val di Rhêmes) Park Visitor Centre.