David

A swan and her two cygnets which kept swimming up and down on the River Windrush at Burford. There was no sign of a cob.

Five or six sleek horses, each with a young foal, in a steeply rising field on a very warm sunny morning. One mare running, closelfy followed by her foal. All the others standing in a group, sharing the small patch of shade cast by the neighbouring wood.

One picture in the middle of the sequence shows a horse with a coat, which was grazing in another field a little further down the same quiet road.

A knapweed flowering by the side of a quiet little road. On the flowers, two gatekeeper butterflies, busy feeding, each totally ignnoring the other’s presence.

A red kite and a buzzard. It’s true that I’ve seen both from within Wolverhampton’s city boundaries in the past few months. But only occasionally, and only on the leafier west side of town.

Buzzards have been resident on Tettenhall ridge for some decades now, so sightings of them are quite likely in the Smestow valley area. Red kites have been spotted flying over much the same area every spring for the past few years.

But for the few days we were staying in Burford, on the edge of the Ctoswolds, last month, we were seeing both species pretty much every day while walking round the town itself.

Admittedly, Burford is a small market town. Countryside with woods and open fields is only perhaps a minute away as the crow (or a larger bird) flies.

Round the corner from the car park and river where yesterday’s muscovy duck hands out, the riverside houses on the way to Burford’s historic church are quite large.

One of them, in the middle, seems to have set itself up as a mini garden centre, specialising in cup and saucer vines. In a flourish of advertising, the flowers were spilling all over the garden wall.

At Burford, a car park by the river is evidently the spot where toddlers are brought to feed the ducks. A crowd of mallards hang out there for the pickings. Sometimes, a swan with a air of growing cygnets muscled in at feeding time.

On the river bank a single muscovy duck, a drake, sat, just watching the proceedings.