Category: David

White petals against a blue spring sky. These flowers were on a pear tree overhanging the pavement on Tettenhall Road.

A cob making a short hop move in a hurry. It never actually took off completely. Instead, it went from sitting in the water towards the middle of West Park lake, to sitting in the water nearer the shore, some twenty or thirty yards away. Half way through take-off it switched to decelerating for landing.

There was no obvious reason for the move, or for why it couldn’t just have swum across. It wasn’t doing anything in particular beforehand, and it wasn’t doing anything in particular once it landed. No swans around at either end, and no geese, ducks or coots in its immediate vicinity. No people who it might hope were going to feed the birds, either.

Castle Terrace, Bridgnorth: one section of the high wall separating the walk from High Town is covered by large clumps of aubretia from one of the houses behind the Thomas Telford church.

The direction faced by the wall means it gets direct sunlight every morning, showing off the aubretia flowers to best advantage when they come out every spring.

There’s crowds of geese on the Severn at Bridgnorth, mostly hanging round near the old bridge waiting for the next people who will come along to feed them. The majority have all-white feathers: feral farmyard birds. Some are greylags, with grey, brown, cream and white. Some are of mixed parentage, with patches of feathers corresponding to both.

This was one such, on its tod, swimming against the current to keep a fixed position just off the tip of the Bylet.

Bridgnorth Castle, one of the ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit (probably not the man himself, but the Parliamentary Army after the Civil War siege of the town). The remaining walls lean further than the bell-tower at Pisa. There’s lots of wall-flowers growing in gaps between the stones and in huge cracks running up the walls.

Some bird species share parental responsibilities. Coots are one.

This was the next nest along from the one featured yesterday, only a couple of yards distant. As I watched, the brooding parent stood up and got into the water. The other parent got on to the nest, spent a short time preening to get its feathers comfortable, then hunkered down on the eggs.

Meanwhile, the bird now in the water swam off in search of food.