David

Seaside gulls aren’t the only birds which have learnt that chip shop chips are tasty. Turnstones normally feed in the intertidal zone. They do turn small stones over with their beaks, looking for food. Likewise with seaweed.

They can often be spotted when the tide is out in estuaries and harbours. One denizen of Brixham harbour some years ago had swapped the effort of moving pebbles for a habit of hanging round on the pavement outside the local harbourfront chippie, waiting for careless customers to let one slip.

A male common darter, which is indeed one of the commoner dragonflies. The males have a habit, on sunny days, of resting in an open spot, usually near water. Even if they are approached too quickly, they sometimes just move a short distance before settling again. The females, greenish-bodied, are more reclusive, and more wary when they are visible.

Common darters come back every summer to the pond which was created a few years ago in Compton Park, though in ever smaller numbers as the pond is increasingly choked with vegetation. At the pond, they are often spotted at rest on the woodwork of the footbridge. This one was even more cooperative: posing on the handrail, so I didn’t even need to bend down to take these pictures.

Lichen forming a series of concentric rings. The picture was taken some years ago in the grounds of the parish church at Totnes. Probably the lichen was on one of the old gravestones.

A box tree moth resting. This is yet another species with its first British record in recent decades, and a range which is gradually extending northwards. Another marker of the changes brought by global warming.

Deceivers are a quite common species of mushroom which are the fungal equivalent of birdwatchers little brown jobs. They are indeed also small and brown, and easily confused with other species.

Amethyst deceivers would be the same in a monochrome world. In fact, their pale purple (amethyst) colour is unique. Nor are they particularly common. This picture was taken on the only occasion I’ve ever seen some. They were in Himley Plantation, a Woodland Trust woodland which supports lots of interesting fungi. It was September 2014 when I saw them. When I revisit the wood, I look carefully round the area where they were, but there’s been nothing since.

Unmistakable with the ragged outline of its wings, which were held at the right angle to show the supposed comma on the underside, a comma butterfly feeds on the highest flower of a buddleia.

I think this is the only species where I saw at least one in this years first, spring, generation as well as this one in the summer. Both times, it was literally one individual, well down on the usual numbers.

These acorns, on oaks in Bantock Park, are contorted because a wasp has laid an egg in them. The wasp was an oak knapper wasp, and the acorns have become oak knapper galls. There’s twenty or more different species of wasps which lay their eggs in oaks, each of which produces a different type of gall. The most familiar is the so-called oak-apple.

I’ve visited different sections of the park a couple of times since the knapper galls were pointed out to me. Every single oak I’ve checked has had every single acorn (at least those visible from ground level) visited by a wasp.

Finally, some way into August, a few days of dry and hot weather meant a few more insects started to appear. Buddleias were still in flower, although just the highest and least visible flowers.

Still, at last they lived up to their name of butterfly bush a little. Several species visited, though still in small numbers. Most frequent were small peacock butterflies, showing themselves often in semi-silhouette. There was also at least one red admiral, which hid itself whenever there was a camera nearby.

Various shades of purple are a common colour among lots of the flowers of high summer. A small sample from a short walk on the Riverside Project reserve in Stratford on Avon last month.

Marsh woundwort has a name giving a clue to the medicinal properties it was presumed to have. Most teazle flowers are a delicate shade of purple, though some are so pale as to be almost white. The many species of thistle come in multiple shades of purple.

Flowering among the riverbank vegetation in Stratford on Avon, wild angelica. It can be found by the river as long as the banks are not carefully manicured.