but I love watching them carefully balancing themselves with their tails on the edge/outside of the tray… as they prepare to drink… bending down over the lip of the tray, sucking up some water… then holding their heads high (presumably to let the water trickle down their throat)… 
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La tarente de maurétanie (Tarentola mauritanica)?
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We went to one of the local beaches recently at a particularly low tide and saw a couple of things we couldn’t identify. Perhaps some of you more knowledgeable people might know?
First two pics are the same thing (there were loads of them) and the third pic is an example of several similar squidgy objects around the low water mark.
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Th first two are Cored chimney sponge. The other is some sort of bivalve.
I cheated, I’m not that knowledgeable, I used Google Lens. From Chrome, you hover over the picture, right click and select ‘Search with Google Lens’ and it tells you what it is
Thanks @hairbear. Having looked up Cored chimney sponge, you are absolutely right 
Not sure about the bivalve though - it was big - about 30cm across - and squidgy. Looked liked some weird sort of meat…
Maybe a sea cucumber or 2? They can be all sorts of weird shapes and colours.
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I did wonder about that but couldn’t find anything similar. We’d better go back at the next really low tide and see if we can get a better look!
The fields where we walk the dogs are now carpeted in beautiful crocus type wild flowers whose name I forget.
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Colchicums - absolutely beautiful!
Thanks for that name Angela. My neighbour told me but it went in one ear and…
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Why not get your snorkel on and go back at high tide? Then you can see what they get up to when no-one is looking. 
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Glorious to see the fields filled with white blobs… which turned out to be cattle egrets (garde-bœuf) when I took a more leisurely look… 
These birds have been missing throughout the summer… so I guess it’s another sign that this is autumn…
(not my photo… sadly)
Some noises outside deep in the garden at night. On quite a few nights in past few weeks.
It sounds like a cross between a bark and a dry cough and is repeated separately a few times over an hour or so. If I had to choose it’s more of a cough.
Anyone any idea what night animal could make this noise? If a fox I would want to keep my cat inside.
We have had the odd bambi type deer over the years too but no idea what they sound like.
Deer probably 
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Egrets - I’ve had a few - but then again…
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You’ve morphed into @ChrisMann . 
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Je n’egret rien. As Edith Pilaf would say. 
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I’ll take that as a compliment (I think)
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