Wolves Wild

Turnstone searching for food in the exposed seaweed, on St Ives beach towards low tide.

Seeds developing, beginning to ripen: snowdrops by the canal near Aldersley Junction recently.

Violets flowering, with stickweed encroaching, right by Aldersley Junction. They were in the remains of a flower bed right by the canal junction – was there once a toll house on the site? So they might be a domesticated variety.

A first experiment in slow motion filming. Mallard drakes and a first winter black-headed gull.

Hyacinth just about to flower. This one was in the Sensory Garden at Northycote Farm.

Swan preening on the pool at Perton, another being more through near the stream inlet to the pool.

A pair of tufted ducks, floating on West Park boating lake, dozing but keeping an eye out for any problems.

On the stem at the edge of the clump, this daff was just beginning to open during a brief sunny spell on a morning where one shower followed another.

Courtship dance: a swan pair on West Park boating lake swim in parallel, mirroring each others movements. This was only a short manoeuvre, possibly the species equivalent of a first date. A more extended version of such a routine is the prelude to the mating of a swam pair (they are lifetime monogamous).

Dryad’s saddle growing on a tree on the Smestow edge of the Paddock, Smestow Valley LNR. It’s a spring / summer fungus, but this and several smaller fruiting bodies growing on the same trunk had already been around long enough to be looking tired and elderly.

Dunnock perching on of of the branches of a bush in the Castle Grounds, Bridgnorth.

Sticky buds on the end of one of the twigs of a horse chestnut tree. The larger bud at the end of the twig covers what will open up to form one of the so-called candelabra of flowers. The smaller bud is of a leaf. Just below it, a scar of attachment marks the spot where there was a leaf stalk last year.