Category: David

In parts of south Shropshire bordering Staffordshire there are valleys in the sandstone with no sign of surface streams.

Normal dry valleys are found on highly permeable rocks such as limestones. Sandstone is partly permeable, but I doubt that it is permeable enough to explain the dry valleys in this area. The U-shape of these valleys marks them as a product of ice age erosion. Are they ghosts of the glaciers and their floods of meltwater?

The valley pictured comes down to the Claverley Brook / Hilton Brook between Lower Hopstone and Hilton.

No difficulty working out which is the sow and which the boar from these Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs in a field near Claverley recently.

These bullrushes on Doxey Marshes have been pecked by a bird, so the seeds are just escaping from one patch near the tops.

Buzzard sitting on the fence of a roadside enclosure. Every so often it would dip down onto the ground in the enclosure, presumably when it noticed a morsel worth eating, then come back to sitting on the fence.

It didn’t seem noticably worried though it saw me walking up fairly close in plain sight to get these pictures. Perhaps it was a young bird.

Honesty growing by a footpath near Brewood, with blossoms in the middle of February. A field guide gives the plant’s flowering season as April to June.

Cormorants gather in some numbers near the upstream junction of the Exeter Ship Canal with the River Exe in Exeter. Here is one standing on the edge of the weir by the junction, and one swimming in the river, diving for fish, then flying off.