Category: David

Jackdaws with a territory which includes a section of Chipping Campden High Street. Two were perched on a TV aerial on one side of the road, another in a tree opposite.

Teazle seed heads on plants growing in the marshy area by Compton Park pool, very lightly frosted on an cold but sunny morning. Moving a couple of steps changed the strongly directional lighting from backlit to sidelit.

Tufted duck (drake to be precise), seen from above. The drops of water which have not yet come of his back are from the last time he dived for food.

I first saw this statue probably some forty years or so ago. It was then in a large hall in the Papal Palace in Avignon, among many stone or wood carvings of religious subjects which had been gathered from churches in the area.

It was labelled as a tarasque – a mythical monster which had terrorised the stretch of the River Rhone between Avignon and Arles until it was tamed by St Martha.

The statue has now been moved to be a centrepiece of a museum of sculpture elsewhere in the city. Its labelling now says it is not a tarasque (indeed it doesn’t correspond to the description). It pre-dates Christianity, and pre-dates the Roman conquest of Provence. It is now described as representing a Celtic monster, portrayed in the act of eating a man, symbolic of Celtic beliefs of death and rebirth. So here it is as an alternative to the usual old year / new year symbolism as the old gaffer with the scythe and the baby.

Narrowboat “The Crow”, moored at Stratford Basin recently, its roof decorated with a plastic crow. Seems to be a popular form of ornamentation on the canals. Earlier in the year I spied another boat, a similar crow on its tiller, as it descended Wightwick Lock.

Starlings assembled to roost on the weathercock and ornate stonework of the Guild Chapel in Stratford on Avon.