David

Japanese anemone flowering earlier this month – isn’t that rather late in the year? I was asked to picture the flowers to show the contrast with the colour of the leaves of the sambucas (black elder) bush behind them. The contrast was more effective in reality than in my shots.

River mists in the mornings are a frequent and visually attractive phenomenon in the Vézère valley. Our brief visit coincided with the September Atlantic storms, so mornings had visibility reduced by heavy rainfall, not mist.

But there was one day when we were walking back from our evening meal when the rain stopped, and a light mist developed. From the level crossing, there was a view down the line to the small railway station. Its lights were all on, though the line was then closed for engineering works.

The mist was given an unearthly glow, tinted a spectral green by the station lights, and orange by those of the nearby road.

The cliffs that define the valley of the Vézère at les Eyzies. High up on some of the cliffs are square holes where beams were located for houses and farm buildings, some up to recent times.

A black redstart on a wall, looking around. It’s a young bird, which hadn’t yet learned the importance of caution.

We’d set off to walk along a quiet road to go to the much smaller village of St Cirq to visit the Cave of the Sorcerer. As we were beginning to get grumpy from the heat and the lack of shade, we came across this praying mantis crossing the road.

Chub in the clear waters of the River Beune, a tributary of the Vézère which as its confluence in les Eyzies.

A cricket or crickets warming in the afternoon sun while clinging to the wall of the National Museum of Prehistory in les Eyzies. A favoured spot: there was a cricket in much the same place on our most recent visit last month.

Walking with a crutch can make photography difficult, particularly if the crutch goes on the same arm used to hold the camera. It makes for especial awkwardness when fiddly manoeuvres are involved, such as adding close-up lenses for picturing insects or other subjects.

These European firebugs are very distinctive, and apparently quite common on across much of the Eurasian mainland: most reports in Britain are near the coasts facing France and the low countries.

I saw several when we visited last month, but didn’t picture any. These pictures were taken when we previously visited the village, at the same time of year in 2012. Posts for the next few days will also include pictures from that visit, which I didn’t upload to the web at that time.

Fungi on the trunks of various trees around les Eyzies. I’m currently still walking with the aid of a crutch, so exploring the extensive woodlands in the area wasn’t an option. The trees supporting these fungi were nearish to the river; some of them in the garden of the hotel we were staying in.

Butterflies in les Eyzies. Only the small white was taken during our recent visit: the others date from an earlier visit, exactly twelve years earlier.