David

Pussy willow catkins covering a tree. Caught at the stage were almost all had developed the grey “fur”, but when only a few had started to cover this with they yellow pollen which it is the catkins’ job to disperse into the wind.

There’s a large gathering of geese on the Severn at Bridgnorth. Most are white-feathered, feral barnyard birds. Some are greylags, and others crosses between these two types.

On the day of my last visit, most of the geese were walking round on the Bylet and its mudbank and shale extensions. Just one goose, a cross, was a little further downstream, by the bank across the river, busy diving and splashing as it groomed itself.

As the weather warms, glsitening inkcap mushrooms seem to be appearing in clusters all over the place. Here they were on a tree stump by the Railway Walk at Newbridge.

The numbers of plants putting out their flowers is now accelerating. Here the sculptural flowers dangling from a ribes bush.

A mid-march frost was melting, although the sun had been up less than an hour. But there were still some frost crystals clinging to these clumps of moss growing on the top of a wall.

By the middle of march, the water of the Severn was returning to more normal levels after the floods at the end of the previous month. Men were clearing up some of the flotsam which had been left behind on one of the mudbanks by the Bylet, and a collection of fallen trees had collected by the usual arch of the old bridge, with a beer barrel nestling in the branches.