Category: David

A magpie prospecting for invertebrates on the recently-cut grass of one of the paths on the barley Field. Its scruffy plumage and somewhat short tail perhaps indicate it is a young bird.

When meadow salsify is flowering, it looks a little like dandelions with a very takk thin stem. Its flowers close up around the middle of the day, earning it the alternate name of jack go to bed at noon.

here some seed head. Until they begin to be dispersed, the sphere they form looks more complex and sculptural that a dandelion “clock”.

Flowers on another of the stems as the same yarrow plant featured in a post yesterday. More common red soldier beetles, not feeding, but locked in a mating embrace. They, or rather the female, walking as they did so, making surprisingly good progress.

Filberts, cobnuts or hazelnuts, whatever you call them, starting the process which should end in them ripening. In fact, it will end with the nuts being grabbed by grey squirrels before they are quite ripe.

Common red soldier beetle feeding on a yarrow flower. They are indeed quite common at the height of summer, and mainly coloured red. They are vegetarian in diet, and don’t go around in armies. Their red colouration isn’t even very much like the scarlet of one-time uniforms.

A staghorn sunac growing in a front garden. The freshly opened flowers beginning to change from their initial green to the deep, dark red which they will become.