Category: David

Buzzard taking flight because the footpath I was on had taken me too near to where it had landed in a stubble field.

Multiple patches of the eggs of some kind of insect sticking to the underside of a leaf.

White flowers of hoary plantains, a plantain species which prefers damp ground with limey or chalk soil. These were growing in the churchyard of Clifford Chambers, just a few miles from the Cotswolds.

Pair of common red soldier beetles hanging on to a ragwort flower. They were concentrating so much on what they were doing that I was able to get near enough for a close-up shot.

One or two young blackbirds noisily and eagerly gathering the ripening mulberries from the tree on the riverside terrace of the Dirty Duck (more formally the Black Swan) in Stratford on Avon.

The tree is associated with Shakespeare, so lots have been planted in Stratford.

The berries were too big for the birds to eat directly from the tree, so they needed to move them to a resting place nearby to eat them in stages. While doing so, they knocked off more ripe berries than they picked, bombarding the drinkers below. Mulberries leave a dark and stubborn stain if they land on clothing.

Large thistle flowers (top and bottom)

A partly dispersed seed head which the flowers develop into