Category: David

Male blackbird in seach of food on a grassy patch near the river Severn at Bridgnorth recently. Occasionally holding its head on one side, listening for worms.

Despite the name, Danish scurvy grass is actually native to Britain. But it is a plant of salty environments. So until fifty years or so ago, it was confined to a limited number of places on the coast. But since then it has spread across the country, mainly growing at the edge of major roads.

Salt from winter gritting splashes onto the roadside soil. The breeze from the slipstreams of traffic helps spread the seeds. Usually it’s found as a line of tiny flowers, the patch only a few inches deep, right by roads in early spring.

These pictures were of a small garden flowerbed facing the main road at Danesford, south of Bridgnorth. The entire bed was filled with the flowers. I don’t know whether they had needed encouragement to take over the whole bed.

An April dawn on a calm day with a sky which had been clear overnight, so just a little mist in West Park, with these views towards Wolverhampton city centre.

Small patch of tiny speedwell flowers which come up every year near to the new pool in Compton Park.

A goose was incubating her eggs on a nest on the accumulation of flotsam forming a still-growing island against a pier of Low Town Bridge, Bridgnorth. In one picture she is twisting her neck to pluck some of her downy feathers from under one wing, for packing in the nest.

Near the other side of the Severn a pair of geese on their nest on shingle under one of the arches of the bridge.

Views over the Severn from the bankside footpath, at Danesford and nearing Quatford. Quatford church, on the top of a riverside cliff, is visible on the skyline in one of the pictures.