Wildlife here in France

The wildlife here in France is shy. We’ve seen boar and deer, hares, rabbits and hawks but not managed to capture any on video, mainly because the sightings have been unexpected and over very quickly.

Having said that, I do have a few pictures to share. I'm no botanist and a lot of the flowers and plants are unknown to me, so bear with me when I can't identify them. If you know what they are, I'd appreciate the knowledge.

I was worried this was ragwort to start with. It has similar flowers, but the leaves are not the same.

I looked this up and I think it's an 'Octopus fungus'. Very weird, found in woodland

I don't know what this is called, but it grows as a dusty-pink colour. It doesn't photosynthesise like other plants, instead, it gets nutrients from the roots of other plants. It's a parasitic plant, a bit like mistletoe

This delicate little flower is a violet, possibly a Field Violet. We have lots of this flower in the bottom of the field where it's always damp.

This unusual creature is a spotless ladybird or 'ladybug' for our American audience. I have no idea how it got its name - I'll probably disappear off into an insect rabbit hole later today, to research why it's called 'Ladybird/bug'

I think this is a Swallow. We have a few flitting around the stables, making their usual nests. They're really busy little birds and we look forward to seeing them every year.

I have no idea what this flower is. I bought one in a pot last year and it thrived and spread.

Carpenter bee. They're large and noisy, but they are so beautiful, black, shiny and almost metallic-looking

Apologies for the terrible image quality. It was dusk, the subject was far away and I had to zoom in to even get this picture. A few moments later, this owl dropped into the garden and flew off with something for its supper.

This mushroom has collected water. I seem to think it's known as an 'apple mushroom', but don't hold me to that.

Part of our property was a vineyard mid-20th century. All the vineyards failed around the 1950s and farmers turned to growing walnuts as their main crop. The 'bare bones' of the vineyard can still be seen in the woodlands, straight rows and furrows where the vines once grew. Some survived, obviously, and can be seen in the hedgerows that border the woods

Wild roses also grow in the hedgerows. And we have Blackthorn too. Blackthorn fruit are sloes, an ancient ancestor of the plum

This tiny spider was transporting something when I spotted it. As you can see, the grass is difficult for it to cross. I watched it for a little while and I think it's carrying an egg sac.

The kestrel is nesting in the barn again and it chases the buzzards off. We put lights on this tree at Christmas time, but haven't managed to get a star up there. Maybe the kestrel will take it up there this winter?

We have raptors here, birds of prey that whirl and swoop over the fields. Red-tailed Kites often fly overhead. I think my chickens are safe, as they're too big for the kite to manage

*This is a still from a video. I'll get it uploaded to Youtube in another post.

This little guy was rescued from the pool. He's one of the bigger lizards we get here

This is one of the smaller lizards.

This horrible creature is a 'Flatfly' and the females have saw-like mouth-parts with which to cut into an animal's flesh. They need the blood to make their eggs and the poor horses go through it with these flies. They can also take a bite out of humans too, but they don't like the taste of their blood, so only bite once. The flies are really difficult to kill, they can take a good slap, return to the wound they made and carry on as though nothing happened. I wear gloves and one way of killing them is to slap the fly hard and, using a lot of weight behind your hand, rub the fly on the horse's neck to kill the fly. I also use ducktape to catch them. The sticky tape keeps hold of the fly, but be careful, the fly is strong enough to escape if you don't wrap it up quickly and kill it.

Izzy the Lizard

We get cute frogs inside the house too. They over-winter in the shelter of the door frames. When they begin to get active in the springtime, they are really noisy

Not quite 'wildlife'. We have found a couple of skulls on our fields. Most recently, we found a young boar skull. I saved it, but Tora decided it would be a good toy and she left it on the drive, where it got crushed. The bones were not dense, unlike this deer and they started crumbling. The boar skull had teeth that had not yet erupted through the jawline.

We get stinkbugs and these things. I don't know what they are, they don't bite or sting, but they don't fly well, either. The stinkbugs fly more by luck than judgement and only land when they crash into something.

I think this episode is enough for now. I'll post some more pictures at a later date.