Annalia S.'s photos with the keyword: bark

Light shines through graffiti sprayed onto the translucent sound barrier and the old fence by the railroad tracks, while a wet platanus bark contributes its more somber colors and more natural designs. HFF, everyone, and have a colourful weekend!

This is for any "garden variety" detectives out there. Who/what left this curl on one of the trees in my garden? Other clues; The only people who come into the garden are me and my husband (and neither of us is in the habit of scratching the bark off the trees). This is a tall tree with hardly any branching off except at the very top and it's very flexible. At the top of the tree a pair of wood pigeons are nesting. Right next to them hangs a home made bird feeder that is popular with sparrows. This is a macro, so the curl is actually quite small. Will publish the identity of the culprit tonight. Meanwhile ... does anyone care to have a guess? PIP ADDED and ... Congratulations, Karl and Stephan! You pretty much guessed it! We do not have woodpeckers or other birds that feed on bark parasites and no squirrels, so Suspect N. 1 is .... Mina! I have added a pip to introduce her to you. She is not ours but likes to visit and is possibly the fiercest hunter of her kind I have met, daring to mess even with creatures that are nearly as big as she is. She grew up with dogs so she has a number of dog like behaviours that are quite funny, such as laying on her back and showing her belly when she wants to play. A pleasant visitor but ... a terror for the poor birds!

With no snow or hoarfrost around here, I was looking for some alternative designs in white for my wintertime photography. It was only after I had this close up of the bark of a white poplar up on the screen that I noticed the white designs looked like fairyland creatures, little ghostly gremlins with eyes, limbs and pointy ears. It took me back to when, as a child, I was prone to seeing fairies, gnomes and goblins pretty much every time I stepped into the woods. Too bad we seem to lose that imaginific power as we grow up ... except maybe through photography! Or is it old age ? :)

winter in the woods of Tuscany

In its own somber way, even winter can be colourful! This is the bark of a platanus tree decorated by lichen.

This is the bark of a platanus tree, but the designs make me think of ghostly animal shapes running through smoke and fire. Over one billion animals lost (not counting the smaller ones, like frogs and insects) is a tragedy beyond imagination. We need to call things by their name: what is happening in Australia is not an unusual bushfire season, it is an environmental disaster of staggering proportions, one for which we are collectively, globally responsible.