David

On the top floor of the RSC theatre in Stratford, the restaurant has an outside balcony, pleasant in fine weather, and with good views. In one direction, two bridges cross the river. Clopton Bridge, the historic start of the London road, seems to get ever busier with constant streams of traffic by day. Tramway Bridge can also get crowded with pedestrian traffic. At such times, cyclists can be a hazard, now joined by speeding electric scooters.

Further round, Bancroft Gardens, an expanse of grassy lawns which can get quite crowded with picknickers as times. Beyond the bottom basin of the Stratford Canal, the main shopping streets of the town are to the left. In the distance, the Welcombe Hills rise.

A female mallard with her very young ducklings on the Avon by the Stratford Rowing Club landing stage at the start of this month. The ducklings may even have hatched that same morning, or perhaps on the previous day. This is very late in the year. The ducklings will have to grow up fast if they are to survive the winter.

The wings of these maple seeds beginning to brown as the seeds at their base are ripening. The tree was growing close to Lucy’s Mill footbridge over the Avon at Stratford. So I could stand on the steps to get this close-up with the subject at eye level.

A heron at the foot of one of the weirs on the Avon at Stratford, looking out for fish being swept down by the water. It constantly seemed on the verge of swooping, but never actually did so while we were watching.

I’m not sure what happened to these cardoons, or rather to the remains of cardoons, to give them such a bleached-out appearance. They were among the plants growing wild on the site of a former helipad in Stratford on Avon.

Along with the several damselflies by the river at Stratford, there were two dragonflies, of different species. One was large, brown, and constantly on the move. It stayed too far out over the water to get a clear view, or any sort of picture. The other was more cooperative, spending time resting on a leaf. It was a broad bodied chaser, which is indeed one of the commoner dragonflies.

It was a mature male. Immature males and all females are yellow-brown.

Ripe plums fallen from a tree, their skins in various stages of decoration from the fungi which are rotting them.

Where vegetation grows wild on the banks of the Avon it’s normally good for lots of different insect types in summer, including butterflies. On one occasion, we even saw an exotic tropical butterfly there. Sadly, that will have been an escapee from the nearby butterfly farm. This year, in the summer without butterflies, all we could spot was this single comma, feeding on the waterside meadowsweet flowers.

Bancroft Gardens, by the canal basin and the river in Stratford on Avon, is a municipal showcase. Cardoons are quite a feature, including these which were coming to the end of their flowering season by the path to the Tramway Bridge.

Male demoiselles, brightly coloured damselflies, spend much of their time on sunny days resting on waterside leaves, displaying themselves. Should a second male come in to land close to where one is already resting, they both take to the air. There’s a brief skirmish, ending with the intruder finding its landing place a little distance away and the other settling back into its old position.

I don’t remember ever seeing two males settled so close as these before, both on the same leaf. Occasionally, one or other of them would take off, fly around for a brief time, then land again where it had previously been.