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Iceland is a land of fire and ice on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that offers barren landscapes of raw beauty, enlivened in summer by all the birds that come to breed. In the southeast of the island, the huge Vatnajökull ice cap covers almost a tenth of Iceland's territory (8%), it is the largest in Western Europe. In the south, the glacier tongues descend to the coastline and two of them end in the glacial lakes of Fjallsárlón and Jökulsárlón. Icebergs break off from the front of the glacier and drift in the « lagoon » to a small river that carries them to the waters of the ocean. At sunset and in the endless summer twilight, these cold and flat waters, with icebergs all different in shape, size and colour floating on them, create a crystalline landscape in constant renewal; a landscape animated by a slow drift and the sudden overturning of a block of ice, creating a natural show like no other.

In French, we use two different names for gulls: mouette for the Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) and goéland for most other gulls like the European Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) or the Lesser Black-backed Gull (Larus fuscus). All these birds belong to the Laridae family, but the Black-headed Gull is easily distinguished by its general appearance, its less massive silhouette and its behaviour.
Gulls breed often on the coastline or in the vicinity, but several species also occur inland, especially in winter. As wrote the French ornithologist Paul Géroudet in his book Les Palmipèdes d’Europe : « The gulls can be considered as the almighty lords of the shores, and without the moving adornment of their flight, without the incomparable liveliness they give them, coasts, lakes and rivers would be bleak and deserted. »

What would our forests and parks be without the acrobatics of this playful rodent perfectly at ease at the end of the smallest branches and even in the air? Everyone knows the silhouette and facial mimics of the red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris). Although it is suspicious of people and keeps its distance in principle, it does not hesitate to enter gardens and approach houses in search of food. If this lively and nervous animal is so familiar to us, it is also because its rhythm of life coincides with ours: unlike most mammals, it is only active during the day. When two squirrels come across each other, they can go on a wild chase, sometimes taking a game of hide and seek, head downwards, running around a trunk. As swift as ever, when the acrobat moves on the ground, it takes long successive leaps to the next tree. When surprised, it stands motionless on a branch and shows a great deal of restlessness from its eyes to its snout. At the end of summer, the excitement increases and the activity becomes frenetic. From July until October, it is the season for hazelnuts and then walnuts. During this period, the red squirrels get down working frantically. They are waving in all directions in the hazelnut and the walnut trees, eating on site or carrying their harvest to be buried in hiding places scattered throughout their home range. The animal retains an overall memory of the places where it has buried its provisions, but it is thanks to its sense of smell that it will eventually find its hiding place, or that of another squirrel!

On the edge of Benin, in the far north-west, the Pendjari National Park is separated from Burkina Faso only by the river of the same name. In the Sudano-Sahelian savannah, trees, shrubs, bushes and tall grass form a dense environment in the heart of which animals easily hide. Park rangers regularly light fires in certain areas to keep the environment relatively open. The Pendjari Park is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful wild sanctuaries in West Africa, one of the few to still house buffaloes, elephants and lions.