Being a farm site with a reasonably sized lake, our camp site and Fanjeaux is home to a diverse collection of wildlife. The lake currently has a family of mallards, a family of coots and some frustrating little grebes that insist on diving beneath the surface whenever a camera appears. The lake is also teeming with dragonflies and damselflies of various colours.

Every now and then non-resident wildlife drops in for a while or passes through very briefly. A couple of days ago we were invaded by a plague of metallic-looking, iridescent beetles. Depending upon the light, they appeared either bronze or green but in any case were very attractive. As yet we’ve been unable to identify the beetles in our insect book so I can’t put a name to them. Their size seemed to vary tremendously, with some being about twice the size of others.

The main trees on this site are formerly very large poplars, now having been seriously pollarded by farmer Luc. In between the poplars are what we think are small ash trees, 6-10 feet (2-3 mtrs) tall. It was the ash trees that were attracting the attention of the iridescent beetles. The beetles were merrily munching the edges of the leaves, very much as caterpillars do. Some of the beetles began copulating back to back though they appeared to keep eating while they were engaged in sex – very rude, even for a beetle, I’d have thought.

Beetles aren’t great fliers, often, and these seemed to be flying tail down forming a kind of crucifix shape in the air as they buzzed about a small tree next to us. Always interested in pretty new wildlife, we snapped away happily and Francine managed a action shot of one flying.

  A day or so after the invasion I glanced up at one of the taller ash trees, the first to be targeted by the beetles, and was horrified to notice how completely they had stripped its top branches.  There wasn’t a leaf left in site. Mercifully, the beetles didn’t seem to destroy the lower branches’ leaves so we hope the tree will recover but it looks in a pretty sad state now.

There are usually just a couple of months of the year that offer sane people some respite from the tribal fanaticism of the erstwhile sport of soccer. Cricket should take over and, whilst not as gentlemanly as it used to be, still beats soccer hands down. Regrettably, once every four years, what would normally be the halcyon days of a football-free summer are ruined by the World Cup. Such is the case this year though, because we are in France where the national team seams to be doing as poorly as our own, it is not being rammed down our throats to the extent that I might expect.

Up until this trip, I’d have said that the French knew nothing of the existence of cricket. However, Francine did spot a reference in our campsite book to a site that is “close to a cricket pitch”. She can’t remember where but I assume it has to be in a region with a substantial number of ex-pats. The weather back at home in England is consistently beating our French weather so there, cricket may be continuing relatively unhindered. Were there a cricket season here, by now it would surely have been cancelled due to weather if not to soccer.

The halcyon days of summer are on hold in France, at least. Once again, yesterday we suffered a 15-hour deluge. Today was technically an improvement with the rain being light and very intermittent, though we were still being battered by very high winds. However, the ground is now so waterlogged that caravan Guillaume was surrounded by pools of standing water. The water wasn’t draining anywhere very quickly so we decided to move Guillaume up the slope of our pitch to what might hopefully be drier ground. In doing so we uncovered another poor critter that also seemed to have the impression that cricket season had been cancelled this year. I’ve never seen one before but it’s a Field Cricket. I was surprised by its size; it’s about 2cms long. It should be chirping away in the sunny fields but couldn’t seem to find anything to sing about.

We know how it feels.