Category: David

Cinnabar moth caterpillars are strongly coloured to warn would-be predators of the toxins they absorb from their food plant, ragwort.

The adults are also brightly coloured, and fly by day.

Lime is one of the last trees to produce its flowers every year. When they arrive they have a strong and sweet perfume.

Whirlygig beetles zooming round the surface of a pond, leaving complex patterns of spreading ripples in their wake.

Young bird, probably a goldfinch, high in a hawthorn bush by the canal where it is crossed by Castlecroft Bridge.

That particular bush seems popular as a vantage point for birds. Earlier on the same day as this picture was taken, there had been a whitethroat. A couple of days previously, a yellowhammer in the same spot.

The rather unprepossessing flower of a bistort, which grow in damp places.

Distorted and discoloured sections at the end of twigs on hawthorn bushes. They are caused by an infection, either of a fungus (rust) or an insect which has laid an egg in the plant (gall).