David

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.

I first took a few pictures of this small cluster of lurid boletes about four weeks earlier than this set. At that time, the mushrooms must have only recently emerged. Passing them again, their surfaces were more or less completely covered with a mould, or perhaps a fungus, living on them. Do the changes of colour perhaps show that there is more than one species of parasite present.

Judas tree seed pods turning delicate colours as they begin to ripen. These were on the tree next to the West Park Conservatory.

Red squirrels have been edged out of most of Britain, displaced by greys originally from north America. They are still in Scotland, on Brownsea Island in Portland bay, on the Isle of Wight and the Isles of Scilly. And, of course, on mainland Europe.

That’s where we saw this one, in the gardens of the Alhambra Palace in Granada (a long time ago). It was yet another squirrel which was used to being fed, and came closer rather than fleeing when people were around.

Berries, dangling down in bunches at different stages of ripening. These were on the lowest branches of whitebeams.

I was taking a few pictures of white bindweed flowers to contrast with those of the pink-flowered variety (see yesterday’s post). Then I noticed a very big bee, deep in one of the flowers.

It’s getting towards that time of year when spiders become more visible, indoors as well as out. I’ve noticed some impressive webs. But not, so far, their occupants. These are older pictures from this time of year, which I never got round to putting online till now.

They’re all common garden spiders, sometimes called cross spiders from markings on the backs of their abdomens. And they’re all female. Like many other spider species, the females are much bigger than the males.