Goslings, some a lot more well grown than others on the day of my visit, by the Severn at Bridgnorth. Their parents part of the resident flock, a mixture of greylag and feral geese.
Possibly a garden escapee, this flowering viper’s bugloss was growing on the pavement of a residential street.
A young coot, by now almost as big as its parents, stands on the end of a fallen log in West Park lake. Occasionally it takes a few pecks at preening its feathers.
One of those urban weeds which I just vaguely noticed but never really paid attention to. Then I got an ID on these pictures. It’s wall lettuce, and does indeed seem happiest right up against walls, on pavements all over the place.
I took these pictures looking directly down at the plant. The very long, thin stems were bowed down, perhaps by the weight of the tiny flowers.
A pair of shelducks taking their ease on sparsely vegetated shingle on the Rye Harbour nature Reserve. One appeared to be asleep, the other awake and alert.
The main access road into the Rye harbour Nature Reserve, busy with birdwatchers and other nature lovers, lots of dog walkers, and even the odd vehicle going to or from the reserve visitor centre. None of this traffic stopped a common pill woodlouse from making its way, with a few random changes of direction, from one grassy verge to the other.
A well-grown moorhen chick in West Park grooms its feathers. As it stands preening then stalks off, its feet look, at least to me, as out of proportion to the rest of its body.
A box bug on a leaf. Another new species to me, although the field guides say they are quite common.
On West Park lake, one coot feeds another. I’m not sure why.
It could be an adult feeding one of its chicks. Coots are big on parental care. Both parents feed the chicks even when they have grown enough to forage for themselves. But surely not once the chicks have grown up enough to adopt adult plumage. The one being fed is somewhat smaller than the other bird, so might still be on of this year’s hatchlings.
Alternatively, this might be a pair of adults which were just beginning the process which might lead to trying to raise a brood: feeding as part of a courtship process. It was a bit late in the year for that, but perhaps not quite too late if, for example, this was a pair which had lost all the chicks from an attempt earlier this year. Coot chicks do suffer a heavy attrition rate, despite all the efforts of parental care.
A summer mushroom growing on wood chip mulch under bushes in West Park. I suspect my limited identification skills would not have been up to working out its species even with pristine specimens, still less in the state it was in.
A pair of scarlet tiger moths together, presumably mating. Spotted late afternoon, when these pictures were taken. They were still together late evening, having only shifted their positions slightly.
The one with yellow markings was still there the following morning, and was probably the same individual I’d pictured in the same area a few days earlier.
Anyone who often visits the place where a duck is raising her ducklings, or a pair of geese their goslings, or swans their cygnets, gets used to expecting that not all the chicks are going to make it.
This Canada goose family on the lake at West Park had the opposite. Five fluffy, recently-hatched goslings when I first noticed them were five well-grown chicks at the time of my last visit. But the full group being led by the parents had a sixth gosling, half the size of the others.