Category: David

There’s a bear on the flag of Berlin, and even a theory that the city is so named because there were lots of bears in the area when it was founded. So bears were the city’s obvious choice when the decorated statue fashion was at its height some years ago. The pair here with the raised arms are a small sample of what were (and possibly still are) scattered across the city.

The one in Christmas clothing was one an up-market shopping street in Berlin. Together with elves, reindeer and Santas, they’re prone to pop up in any German Christmas Market, Birmingham included.

A small flock of goats in an unfenced meadow by the River Ammer on the outskirts of Overammergau. The river was flowing fast with snowmelt, back in the spring of 2008.

Capri in the season is routinely uncomfortably densely crowded by overtourism. But only a few minutes walk away from the hotspots, it can get quiet enough for nervous creatures like these lizards to rest unconcerned, sunning themselves on garden walls.

Views of the Faraglioni rocks and the eastern end of Capri island which the day trappers don’t get to see: with darkening sky after sunset, and the increasing light of the pre-dawn.

Swallows gathering mud for their nests. Herculaneum, with the muddy ground in the area which had been the town’s harbour before Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.

Roman ruins on the coastline of the Bay of Naples at Pozzuli. At one time they were considered by antiquarians to have originally been a temple: modern archaeology says a market.

An example of bradyeseism, slow motion seismic activity. At some stage oveer the past two millennia, these ruins were underwater for a long time, not because the sea level rose, but because the ground level was lowered.

Subsequently ground level rose again. The structure is now once again on (almost) dry land. But some of the stone shows its submerged history thorough the deep pitting which was caused by marine molluscs.