Category: David

Male swan on the canal at Castlecroft, swimming close to the towpath shore. There’s usually an adult female and one or more young birds around as well, but not on the day these pictures were taken.

It may be called a nuthatch, but this seed feeder is the one the bird makes a bee line for.

A dunnock, feeding on the ground, after scraps which have fallen, knocked by the birds eating above.

The feeding station at Northycote Farm is popular with the local wild birds all year round, but especially in winter. The birds are well used to spectators. Usually they fly away if anyone new arrives at the viewing area, but return in full force in a few seconds. The pictures in this and today’s other posts from the feeding area were all taken in a spell of less than five minutes.

For starters, bluetits and coal tits, spending most of their time eating the grain, occasionally shifting to the peanuts for a change.

Insects are more rarely portayed in street art than birds or mammals. Here are a few I have come across.

The green grasshopper (for all I know, a cricket or cicada) was part of the window display in a shop in the French Atlantic resort of St Jean de Luz.

The wrought iron doorstep bannister, with dragonflies among bullrushes, was in the Exe estuary village of Topsham. And the dragonfly doorknocker is at Newbridge.

Modern ceramic dragon occasionally on house roof ridges, here a house near to Penn Common.

The old-looking and rusty doorknocker was in the picturesque Cotswold village of Chipping Campden, and the indoor picture is of a medieval weathervane now in Exeter museum. It’s a wyvern.

The doorlatch is from the medieval parish church at Meriden, and again looks like it might be ancient.