Nice thing about flower flies, hover flies and bee flies, they neither bite nor sting.

We save up our garbage at home until we have enough to take it to the local recycling centre/dump. This can be weeks to months since we do not generate much actual garbage. Most of ours is organic which is fed to the neighbours chickens and recycling which is sorted and stored. The place we stayed in, while in a person's home, is still paid accommodation. Called a Chambre d'hotes, or room of the host. We prefer hotels where we have privacy and anonymity since we do not like to engage in chit chat, but sometimes a Chambre d'hotes is all we can find.

Well who knew? Except you obviously. Thanks for adding to our store of esoteric bits of trivia, you never know when some bit of knowledge will come in handy.

I commented to Steve at every point when we passed an obvious "Joe" photo op that we really need him back to do the rear end subjects full justice.

Horseeeeeee butt!!!! 😉

I knew I could count on you for the proper identification! I don’t know birds as I may see them, but am concentrating on keeping myself on the bicycle instead of “ gawking”. It is when you get the “ oh, I am relaxed” effect you (me) will err.. 😬

The big one is actually a fly as well. A hoverfly. It is amazing to me how much like bees hoverflies appear! There are hundreds of species and only real fly experts can actually sort out which is which. But not me... You can tell flies from bees due to flies having only one pair of wings (Family diptera) while bees have two pairs of wings.

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/61851-Eristalis-similis

A possible species contender.

I admired the central trash locations in Spain. Although I have to admit that I wouldn't want to live next to one of those locations! It seems when I'm in Tucson, I hardly ever hit trash day, so I gather up the evenings trash each morning in a plastic grocery bag, and drop it by as I swing through the park. I would fill guilty if I had a full trash can size bag, but from appearance's, this could be trash from a picnic. The point of that being, I could easily adapt to a central trash location.

Are these Warm Showers like in the USA, that are free invitations to stay, or are these paid invitations to stay in someone's house? I see on airbnb, you can lodge with someone, paid. I did talk to a man in Tucson who likes the airbnb share a house approach. He says usually he is treated like family, gets to help making/eating dinner, etc. and that he never feels lonely.

Their heads turn black in spring when they sport their breeding plumage. Other times of year, yes, the black spot is the identifier. Good noticing on your part.

“Black headed” gull? Is the dark spot the “identifier”? Or, perhaps this gull is of advanced age thereby lightening(or in this case whitening) the dark-headed identification . 😬

We really need to coordinate our trips more carefully in advance. Always so near, and yet so far.

Hey, thanks for the preview! We’ll be biking from Mayenne to Laval with Susan in a few weeks.

They really are. There are several different kinds of cows here. Mostly at home we see Holsteins or occasionally Herefords, for meat.

Very likely. Dodie used to make Quince Jelly, which was a very pretty hot pink colour.

Not sweet, acerbic, made tongue numb.