Category: David

Mid-February, and already the violets in the favoured climate near the south Devon coast were fully in flower. These were in a clump which were growing in the churchyard at Topsham.

The Exe estuary at low tide has huge expanses of exposed soft mud, pullulating with invertebrates. That, together with its temperate climate, make it an important site for large flocks of overwintering birds: geese, ducks, waders and more.

When the water’s out, there’s usually a handful of turnstones close to the Goat Walk at Topsham. They wander, more or less as a group, from one clump of seaweed to another, probing the ground searching for things to eat.

A gaudy sunset, probably the most vivid one I’ve ever seen, looking over the Exe estuary at Topsham. Pictures taken with a mobile phone camera, so the white balance varies from shot to shot. In my memory, the light was even redder than it appears in any of the pictures in the sequence.

Narcissi with the flowers already open almost a fortnight ago, on the pavement of a quiet residential street.

Scarlet elf cups are fungi which produce their brightly coloured fruiting bodies just about this time of year. I’ve not managed to get out to look for them at any of their usual spots this year for various reasons. So here’s some pictures I took a few years ago.

Under the trees at Bantock Park. near to the flowering crocuses, one of the clumps of snowdrops.