This week, for Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge, we don’t have to worry where we live. The moon shines upon us whichever hemisphere we live in – whether we’re townies or country mice. So here are my moon shots, mainly from England and Wales… some of them may resemble yours, even if you’ve never visited the UK.
And here’s a selection of waxing moons, waning moons, all over the place.
I popped into Masham on Friday afternoon, and found they were already pretty much prepared for this weekend’s annual Sheep Fair. More of this soon, when I’ve downloaded yesterday’s camera photos from this Must-Visit event. Friday’s phone photo offers a preview.
For Brian’s Last on the Card
The other day, when I posted some of my favourite photos for Tina’s Lens Artists Challenge, I included a view from my room in the quiet French quarter of Pondicherry of builders with their bullock cart full of bricks . Here’s another snapshot from that same room. It would win no prizes in any exhibition, but it’s special to me.
Sleep eluded me in India. One night, I was watching, as I often did, the street cleaners – all of them women – sweeping the streets with the kind of brooms we expect witches to fly around on, exchanging light-hearted chatter. At about two o’clock, they sat themselves in a convivial circle in the middle of the street, produced their snacks, gossiped, laughed and generally gave the appearance of contentment and good cheer.
Doubtless they could never have afforded my simple hotel room: nor could they have dreamt of travelling half way round the world on holiday. Yet they seemed at ease and content. I hope so.
For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.
This week, for the Lens Artists Challenge, Tina invites us to show off ten of our all-time favourite photos. Not only must we explain why we like them, but they have to be technically top-hole too. I can’t do it. When an image is freighted with memories, whether happy or exciting or astonishing, unpicking these from technical considerations is something this snap-shot-ist can’t do. I shall be disqualified. I can live with that.
I first ‘needed’ a camera when I had the chance to spend a month travelling in India in 2007. I was even more point-and-shoot than I am now. Here’s just one memory, taken from my hotel window in the French quarter of Pondicherry (as it was then called), Builders, both men and women, unstacking their consignment of bricks to begin their day’s work at 6.00 a.m. Some of my best memories come from staring out of that window: such as the women who cleaned the streets at night, sitting right in the middle of the road at 2.00 a.m. cheerfully chattering during their break.
By then, we were already living in France. How to pick just a few shots from that period? Let’s have a go. I’ll choose pale and delicate wild daffodils in the mountains just outside Foix, in such profusion it was almost impossible to avoid treading on them. I’ll choose pristine snow, many feet deep, just waiting for a Sunday snow-shoeing outing. The only sound was the snow itself, squeaking softly as we trod it down with our raquettes. I’ll choose a dramatic , never-repeated sunset which glowered over our small town one spring evening.
And sea-voyages. We’ve had a lot of those – back and forth to France when we lived there and came back here often to see family. Nowadays it’s because we need to get to Spain where my daughter and her family live. There’s often a dramatic skyscape.
And now North Yorkshire’s home, with its stone-walled Dales, its meadows and hills, its autumn fogs.
And then there’s Fountains Abbey, where I spend so much time volunteering. Can’t leave that out. We’re just coming into autumn, which may be my favourite season there. So the Abbey in Autumn in my featured photo.
So these are my choices today. Yesterday I might have chosen differently. Tomorrow I’d choose other shots.
PS. Can anybody tell me why WP is no longer always allowing me to centre my photos? Or – now that WP have made it impossible to comment directly onto a post, how to comment on a post that’s more than a couple of days old, such as Tina’s one about this challenge, and which is no longer reachable on the Reader?
Denzil, in this week’s Nature Photo Challenge, asks us to hunt for spiders and their webs – something that it’s easy to do at this time of year in Britain. Only yesterday, a huge specimen was standing guard over the shoe-rack. But by the time I’d got my camera, he’d vanished. These then, are all archive photos, and unidentified. Helpful suggestions welcomed.
The first one is from India. Perhaps I J Khanewala can help? And the second is also not from England, but from La Rioja in Spain.
The third is from Masham Parish Church, and it’s dead. Is it even a spider?
For the rest, I offer a gallery of webs, mainly taken on misty moisty mornings, or in fog, lending them a mysterious and often ethereal quality.
These were taken in Dumfries and Galloway, in Cairnsmore of Fleet National Nature Reserve. As is the header photo.
The next group come from just down the road, near Sleningford Hall.
And lastly, we return to India, where a tunnel spider has made his complex lure.
Here was a quiet moment in Ripon Spa Gardens last Saturday. All of us who are Over a Certain Age had formed orderly queues outside every single doctors’ surgery in town – all three of them – to get not only a ‘flu jab, but also an unexpectedly delivered Covid booster shot. You’ve never seen so many older people in town at one time, or witnessed such parking chaos. No wonder the old geezer on the bench wanted a break.
For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.
What do you need to do to recharge your batteries? That’s the question posed by Egidio, in this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge. And my answer is the same as his: I need to get out, to surround myself with the natural world.
Living in France, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, the mountains grounded me in many ways. The sheer scale of them put me in my place – in a good way: reminding me how little my own concerns counted in the great scheme of things. Here’s a quiet scene from a lakeside high up the slopes not too far from our house.
Or these, from le Cap du Carmil …
There, lakes provided the solace that being near water often provides. Back in the UK, it’s the sea.
For the everyday recharge, it’s greenery, plain and simple. Local woodlands.
…or just a little bit more distant – Coverdale.
There’s just one place I need to mention though: one I’ve talked about before, more than once. A special afternoon and evening in l’Albufera, just beyond Valencia, where there is nothing but the lagoon, the sky, and wildlife … and peace. That’s my featured photo, and my best recharge ever.
This week, Denzil, in his Nature Photo Challenge, is eager to see what shots of wild animals we can come up with. Let’s see what I can find round here in the UK.
Squirrels, for sure. Grey squirrels certainly. They were first introduced to England from America in 1876 as an ornament to the gardens of stately homes, and by 1930, had largely eliminated our native red squirrels: though I have seen them, rarely, in parts of the Lake District and in Scotland. I have to admit this red squirrel was spotted in Spain.
What else?
I’m going to visit my son and family in London for the next two shots, because I see far more foxes there than here in the countryside. Recently, the house next door to them remained empty for a few summer weeks. A fox family took advantage.
The deer in nearby Studley Royal Deer Park are not exactly wild – but they’re not tame either- they’re never handled by humans: and some stags escape into the wild for their holidays before returning in time for the rut. Truly wild deer are common here, but not keen on photo opportunities: so here are two groups from the Deer Park: fallow deer in the shot below, and red deer stags in the featured photo.
We shouldn’t end though without a trip to the seaside. Let’s go to the Farne Islands and then to Pembrokeshire to do a spot of seal-spotting.
I’ve found that visiting posts from fellow-bloggers in far-flung parts of the globe has produced sights of -to me- very exotic creatures. I hope at least some of these shots will seem different to them.
Oh, I almost forgot. I seem to have given myself a task: collective nouns for the animals and creatures I feature. Here goes.
Squirrels: a scurry, a dray, a colony, and a squad. Rabbits: colony, nest, down, warren, bury, kindle, leash, trace, trip, drove, herd, fluffle, flick, husk, and wrack. Hedgehogs: a prickle, array. Toads: a knot, lump, a nest, a knab, a knob, a squiggle. Mice: horde, mischief, nest. Fox: earth, leash, skulk. Deer: herd, bunch, mob, rangale, bevy, parcel. Seals: bob, pod, herd, harem, colony, rookery, plump, spring, crash.
This week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, set by Donna, asks us to look at Time. So … I’ve decided to focus on traditions: traditions about celebration – long enjoyed, long maintained, and still meaningful in the communities where they take place.
Transhumance for instance. It’s that time of year when in the Pyrénées (and in other mountain regions too), near where we lived in France, the cattle and sheep are moved from the lush summer pastures in the mountains down to their winter quarters down on their lowland(ish) farms . They stay there till spring, and then they’re taken up again. And each time, it’s the excuse for a party. Here are some scenes from Seix a few years ago, of the upward part of the year.
They were dancing in Seix. We dance to celebrate wherever we live – always have. Here are Morris Dancers in England, traditional dancers in Catalonia (and more of them in the featured photo) and dancing for the big Harvest celebration of Chuseok in South Korea.
What next? How about Shrove Tuesday, the day when it’s the last excuse to have a bit of fun before the privations of Lent? The day when eggs and butter and other indulgences get used up in the making of pancakes, some of which end up in a race. Participants run the course, pan in hand, tossing their pancakes as they run towards the finishing line. It’s part of every Shrove Tuesday, as it has been for hundreds of years here in Ripon, and in towns and villages throughout the land.
Street entertainers have engaged out attention as long as there have been streets. Jugglers, Punch and Judy shows … anything goes.
Anyway, let’s finish off with a dance, the Sardana, dear to Catalonians for … well, centuries. It’s easy enough – join in the circle and just copy the person opposite you. Come on – you don’t even need a partner!
Every winter without fail, ladybirds – any number from about fifteen to forty – come to hibernate in our bedroom in the recess above the bedroom window. I have never taken a photo of them. And since Denzil issued his Nature Photo Challenge #27- Ladybirds – this week, I haven’t seen a single one out and about, so I am resorting to pillaging photos from Unsplash once more.
But Denzil himself suggested that since I’m fond of collective nouns, I should instead share the one for this charming insect. Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you – a loveliness of ladybirds. Isn’t that quite – er – lovely?
The featured photo is from Kandis in Glasgow, and the above image is by Malcolm Lightbody. Both can be found on Unsplash.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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