David

The old churches in the former Cinque Ports of Rye and Winchelsea are built at the highest points of their respective towns. They’re surrounded by a lot of space for churchyards: in Rye that also extends to a street leading to an open space by the Ypres Tower.

All that makes the areas ideal territory for jackdaws, which were stalking the two churchyards blithely ignoring any people passing close by.

I’ve not seen a single duckling in the West Midlands this year, mainly because I’ve not been near the right bodies of water. But a brief visit to the south east more than made up for that.

The Great Stour running through Canterbury passes through Westgate Gardens, a popular and flowery public park. Every few yards along this stretch of the river there was a female mallard with her clutch of ducklings, each clutch at a different stage of growth.

Views of one of the front gardens in the cathedral close at Canterbury.

For contrast, the final view in the slide show is looking over the wall to the National Trust allotments at Winchelsea.

This is one of the gardens on the square of streets around the old parish church at Rye.

Here, from Winchelsea again, is not so much a front garden as plantings in a narrow strip of soil between a high garden wall and the road. In the narrow strip there’s variety from spurges, roses and alkanets, all topped off with a handkerchief tree joining the ensemble from the other side of the wall.

Two adult coots and some chicks. I didn’t watch for long enough to observe whether the adults were a pair, or whether the chicks were theirs.

From very early in May, a greater celandine plant which had forced its way through the pavement of a residential street was flowering.

One of the West Park carrion crows prospecting for things to eat among the short grass and daisies.