General view of festival goers at the main stage on Day 3 of Download festival at Donnington Park on June 12, 2022 in Donnington, England. (Photo by Chris Bethell/The Guardian)

Camels graze in front of a spacecraft tracking station ahead of the Soyuz MS-10 upcoming launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, October 9, 2018. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

Less than lady like behaviour on Ladies' Day at Epsom, England on June 2, 2017. Ladies' Day is traditionally held on the first Friday of June, a multitude of ladies and gents head to Epsom Downs Racecourse to experience a day full of high octane racing, music, glamour and fashion. (Photo by Peter Dench/Getty Images Reportage)

Customers ride escalators at a shopping mall in central Moscow, Russia on March 2, 2019. (Photo by Mladen Antonov/AFP Photo)

A fan of K-pop idol boy band BTS poses for photographs with cut-out of BTS at a pop-up store selling BTS goods in Seoul, South Korea, December 24, 2019. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

“The red panda (Ailurus fulgens, or shining-cat), is a small arboreal mammal native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China. It is the only species of the genus Ailurus. Slightly larger than a domestic cat, it has reddish-brown fur, a long, shaggy tail, and a waddling gait due to its shorter front legs. It feeds mainly on bamboo, but is omnivorous and may also eat eggs, birds, insects, and small mammals. It is a solitary animal, mainly active from dusk to dawn, and is largely sedentary during the day”. – Wikipedia

Photo: In this handout image provided by Taronga Zoo, Seba, a baby Red Panda, explores his new home at Taronga Zoo on April 7, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. The Red Panda cub was born at Christmas and is the 45th to be born at the zoo since 1977. (Photo by Peter Hardin/Taronga Zoo via Getty Images)