Wolves Wild

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.

A large assortment of flowers which drew my attention enough for me to picture them during our recent visit to France. Most were by roadsides in les Eyzies, either growing wild, planted by the authorities or in gardens. A few in a riverside park in Bordeaux, and one features a flower bed in the Luxemburg Gardens, Paris.

This striped shield bug doesn’t exactly have camouflage which lets it blend in with whatever plants it lands on. There have been a smattering of records of them in England, the furthest north in Solihull.

Incising and sculptures representing women and fertility. The so-called Venus of Laussel (otherwise known as the Venus with the horn) and some of the other larger pieces are in the Museum of the Aquitaine in Bordeaux, the others in the museum at les Eyzies.

A bison, engraved on a piece of reindeer horn, licking its back, perhaps trying to soothe a sore spot where an insect has bitten it. Two other bisons, also on reindeer horn. These were all incorporated into spear-throwers.

Larger carvings, extracted from the walls of local caves, portray a group of horses and a pair of aurochs in low relief.

On the walls and ceilings of some of the caves and rock shelters in the neighbourhood, many, many portrayals of ice animals are still in situ. A herd of horses, in low reliefs getting on for the size of Shetland ponies; a life-sized relief of a salmon, so detailed that it’s possible to tell its sex and the time of year. One cave has hundreds of small incised drawings, which can only be reached by a long trek through narrow passages to deep underground. Another has the only polychrome paintings of ice-age mammals, the originals of which can still be visited.

I don’t remember ever having seen a crazy golf course outside an English seaside town before. Behind a bar in a small village in the middle of France, there was the full set of eighteen holes. The course wasn’t in use, though the equipment didn’t seem to me to be particularly old.

The area was in use: as a chicken run. Several happy-looking hens were wandering round, looking for things to eat. Other houses in the village also had hens wandering round at loose in their gardens.

Strutting round most proudly was this fine feathered fellow, coming right up to the wall directly below where I was leaning out of the bar’s terrace.