Category: David

Lone cormorants fishing in the deep waters of En Vau calanque near Marseille, with the white of the limestone cliffs reflected off the surface of the sea. A trio of the same species fly upstream alone the River Rhone.

This fly agaric mushroom had been out for some days – enough time for something to have had a go at eating it, and for heavy rain to have washed off most of the white “warts” and some of the deep red colour of the cap.

Insects – are they some kind of grasshopper? – which seemed to be everywhere both in the town of Cassis and in the surrounding forest of the Calanques National Park. In town they were easy to spot, like the one on a concrete wall in ths set. In the forest, their camouflage made them almost invisible among the vegetable litter on the gnarled limestone rock.

Magpie inkcap mushroom emerging in Castle Grounds, Bridgnorth, where they regularly grow one one section of wood mulch. The black and white colour of the caps is distinctive.

Cat spotted at the Papal Palace, Avignon. It sauntered up to the Palace just as the doors were opened for paying visitors in the morning, jumped up onto the cash desk to allow itself to be stroked briefly, then headed on inside. Every so often as we came to a fresh courtyard or open space in the building, we could spot it stalking invisible prey.

French, or perhaps all Mediterranean, cats seem to behave even more like they own their surroundings. This one was investigating a flower pot in a back street in Cassis early one morning.