Category: David

Flowers on a maple at Perton. In the background, out of focus, the water of the Penk which the tree was overhanging.

I thought the carrion crow was finding insects to eat in the soil, and occasionally going down to the water for a drink.

When I looked closer, I could see that every time it went down to the water it was bringing back a piece of sodden bread. There was a cache floating from when someone had been feeding the ducks, and leaving more than the ducks actually wanted to eat.

As I finished taking these pictures, the crow went back down to the water again. This time it came back with a complete slice of bread, which it look set to demolish as I left.

Dead red nettle which flowers at this time of year isn’t actually a nettle, though it does look a bit like a nettle. It is visibly not dead either; that bit of the name just means it doesn’t sting. It doesn’t sting because it isn’t a nettle.

These plants were growing in various beds in the Castle Grounds Park, Bridgnorth. They were possibly uninvited visitors rather than official plantings, but none the worse for that.

A male blackbird looking round, singing and preening in a lakeside alder tree at Perton. As he moved around, the stiff breeze was catching and lifting his feathers.

Yellow crown imperial fritillary (Fritillaria imperialis) flower from yet another of the front gardens along East Castle Street, Bridgnorth.

Mining bees, solitary bees which make their individual homes by excavating small holes in the ground (check places like lawns). There’s at least two species of miner bees here. The iNaturalist pattern-matching IDs them as a chocolate mining bee (Andrena scotica), a grey-patched mining bee (Andrena nitida), and as unspecified type of mining bee. All these IDs are unconfirmed.