David

Early this month, a sunny day. Hot by mid-morning. On the canal between Wightwick Mill Lock and Compton, three different species of dragonfly.

Although I tried, I didn’t manage to get any pictures of the first species. Large and brown, they were continuously on the wing, flying both fast and erratically. They may have been brown hawkers.

The one pictured here was also continually on the wing, and is another hawker. Its flights patrolling its territory were a little more predictable. Some of my efforts to get its picture were once again featureless blurs. But sometimes I managed to get the panning right.

Very little detail could be grasped by the naked eye as it flashed past: an impression of blue. The camera has caught more. Its one of the migrant hawkers, but there’s still not enough information to decide which one.

Growing in one of the flower beds where Wolverhampton ring road is joined by Snow Hill, a many flowered rose. The petals on the flowers look like they stayed in place and faded instead of shrivelling and dying.

Not all insects attracted to the ivy are therefor the flowers. This damselfly is a banded demoiselle. The green colour shows it’s a female.

She’s resting on leaves in the sun to attract a male. She keeps shifting her position slightly. Possibly she’s wafting out pheromones to advertise her presence.

Another very common wildflower species which was new to me. Another of the plants which was thought to have medicinal properties because of a supposed resemblance of one of its bits to some part of the human body. In this case, the flower buds and nipples.

A picture focussing on the leaves for IDing the plant.

Another hoverfly attracted to ivy flowers. This one’s a hornet mimic hoverfly. There were three or four of them around, but this one was cooperative in staying within camera range. They are easily taken for big, threatening hornets. But they lack stings.

The bright red colour and elongation are unmistakable in ripening rosehips in early autumn, and, as often, a web has also got in the picture.

Ivy is flowering early this year. For nectar-loving insects, there’s a glut at a time when it’s normally a dearth. They are making a bee line for the flowers: bees, wasps, hoverflies and more.

These are hoverflies: tapered drone flies to be specific.

A water plantain growing in the canal at Wightwick. I took these pictures from the same spot as the one of the canalside ribwort plantain (yesterday’s post).

Water plantains and ribwort plantains are not actually closely related. Water plantains were given the epithet because their leaves are somewhat similar to those of the others.

A green shield bug, its predominant colour an almost perfect match for the leaf it was resting on.

A ribwort plantain growing by the canal, its long stem and distinctive flower almost overhanging the water.