Author: David

A common garden spider. The larger female is normally the one which is easy to notice, especially when enlarged as here, presumably with eggs.

Just for once, no picture with this post.

Instead, here is a link to the very first post on this blog, which was made exactly two years ago.

Since then I’ve only missed one single day. That was later in the first week. Apart from that once, there has been at least one new post every single day – recently it seems to have usually been two per day.

The current score is around eleven hundred posts, featuring well over two thousand images and a dozen or so short videos. As yet I’m not seeing any signs of running out of fresh subjects to picture.

A patch of ivy growing near Compton Mill lock must have been in a favourable position. It had already started flowering earlier than the rest, over a week ago, so there were wasps all over it, feeding.

The recent strong winds brought down a lot of acorns and conkers before they had ripened. I had taken this picture a couple of days earlier.

From the same visit to Wightwick Manor gardens as the previous post. This mushroom is, as its name implies, associated with birch trees, as are several other fungi. Perhaps it is a harbinger of the fungi flush, the autumn period which marks peak visibility.

Last weekend was Heritage Open Day, and the chance to see the garden at Wightwick Manor without the usual entrance charge. Pictured here are some of the trees whose leaves were beginning to take on autumnal colours.