Author: David

Growing wild on rough ground along the French Basque coast, a chicory plat with its bright blue flower.

On the shoreline near the French Basque resort of St Jean de Luz, several turnstones were active. Some were prospecting for food by the harbour: there’s still a small fishing fleet as well as some pleasure yachts. Others were hunting in the grass among the dunes on the foreshore.

We visited the area several times over the years, and never noticed them there before. Perhaps this time they were on their autumn migration, following the Atlantic coasts of France and Iberia.

The River Nivelle flows off the Pyrenees through the French Basque Country. As it meets the sea it divides the small resort town of St Jean de Luz from its even tinier left bank twin, Ciboure.

Its crystal-clear water make it easy to spot the wildlife thriving under its surface, like these fish which were gathering round a chunk of bread someone had thrown for them.

The resort of St Jean de Luz is in the French Basque Country, not many kilometres from the Spanish border. There’s a long sandy beach. At one end of the prom is a river flowing off the Pyrenees, and at the other end a network of footpaths through rough ground overlooking a rocky shoreline.

It was while we were walking along one of these footpaths that we spotted a large flock of sparrows, busy (and noisily) hunting among the feathery heads of a clump of pampas grass, presumably for insects.

I’ve currently run out of recent local pictures. So, until I’ve accumulated a few more, I’ve dug out some holiday snaps from a dozen or so years ago, not previously posted. They are from south western France. To start, low tide in the Garonne estuary at Bordeaux.

Skittering over the exposed mud, and eating chunks of stale baguette which were thrown to them, there used to be a colony of coypus, presumably descended from individuals which had hitched a ride on trans-Atlantic cargo ships in times gone by.

There was no sign of them in the same area last year.

A pair of the greylag geese at West Park, sharing a small puddle for drinking water.