Wolves Wild

The first bluebells I spotted this year, seen earlier today.

Small clumps, not a full-scale carpet, growing on a sheltered and shady bank by the canal not far from Aldersley Junnction.

Two herons up high, in a conifer on the West Park lake island. Both catching the morning sun.

Although they were on the same bough they were standing so that the vegetation separating them meant each could ignore the other.

The paler bird, nearer the end of the branch, is an immature. The one with the darker patches also has nuptual plumes – the ones dangling at the front of its chest. But for some reason it seems not to be with other adult birds at one of the breeding sites locally.

Still tiny towards the end of last month, the buds which later develop into oak leaves.

The young cormorant which has been hanging round West Park in recent months was back again in mid-March.

I always seem to arrive just as it gets back on its favourite perch, at the top of the highest tree on boating lake island, after a fishing expedition.

Here it was taking care of its feathers as they dried in the sun.

Nest, probably goose nest, on the unstable ground formed by deposition in the Severn on the downstream side of one of the piers of Bridgnorth Bridge.

No sign of birds tending the nest while I was there – the nest may have been abandoned.

Record shot of a lesser spotted woodpecker high in a tree Crowther Road wood earlier today.

One of the ring-necked parakeets was on another high branch in the same wood, and at least two voles were not far away. Look out for record shots of both species towards the middle of April – at the moment I have a couple of weeks’ backlog.

Little grebe in summer plumage which spend a few days in the canal below Compton Lock in the middle of the month.

In this series the bird was just gently swimming, not diving repeatedly for fish. When a boat came down through the lock, the bird moved so that it was slightly less visible under the shadow of the far bank and its vegetation.

Return visits starting the day after these pictures were taken have been without any more views of dabchicks.

Pale variety of violets, growing in a patch surrounded by someone’s front lawn.

Great crested grebes on Pool Hall fishing lake, perhaps in the process of deciding whether onot to start testing the water about pairing up.

The birds were swimming in parallel, turning to go back and forth more or less in coordination. But they were widely separated, with one about a third of the way across the water, and the other a third of the way from the far shore.

Osprey (probably) flying high overhead yesterday, following the course of the Severn as it headed by Bridgnorth.

The sticky reddish brown cover of horse chestnut leaf buds, growing on the ends of twigs, would be hard to confuse with anything else.

For some time I’ve been on the look out for scarlet elf cup fungi in places I’ve seen them before. They grow on dead wood, with the fruiting bodies appearing in winter – usually December or January.

This year I didn’t spot any until the middle of March. There seem to be fewer of them that in previous years, but the cups seem to be growing larger than usual to compensate.