Wolves Wild

Feeding time on the canal at Newbridge. Someone from one of the houses backing onto the water has attracted a swan family (I thought five cygnets, though some are hidden in the pictures), two female mallards with their ducklings, and several other mallards.

Painted lady butterfly spreading its wings on ground, to warm itself in the morning sun. Pictures taken back in July 2012 in Devon. These butterflies originate in north Africa, migrating as far as Britain in good years.

Two types of butterfly, gatekeeper and large white, feeding on the same ragwort flower.

Shoo-fly plant, seed case, flower bud and flower beginning to open. Several flowers on the plant, opening one at a time and lasting just for a day before they fall off.

During the long hot dry spell, a gathering by the trickle of water in the overflow of one of the lowest locks of the Birmingham Canal: a greenfinch, robin, bluetit, great tit and a female blackcap. All drinking, some also hunting insects.

Comma butterfly, the “comma” prominent on its underwing as it feeds on a thistle flower.

Fluffy coot chicks on local canals. The younger set were with a parent opposite the Wildside Centre. The other pair, by the Science Park, were with both parents and what might have been an older sibling from a brood earlier this year, already in more or less adult plumage.

When I stopped to look at this group, all of them started swimming towards me at top speed, evidently expecting food.

Robin’s pincushion, a wasp gall infecting rose briars, looking like a tangle of thread on a bush in Baggeridge Country Park.

Bee visiting a mass of meadowsweet flowers, gathering pollen.

Sweetpea pods, ripening on the same plant which had been flowering a fortnight earlier.

Blue butterfly, probably a holly blue, resting on ground made damp by watering.

Cobweb on plants overhanging a canal, its silk catching the light to give subtle rainbow colours.