There are tufted ducks on West Park lake all year round. Over the winter, some forty or so gather, and spend their time on the water in large groups.
Come spring, most of them head off to their preferred breeding areas. Just a handful stay. Most of them, like the one pictured here, are males. They have a more prominent tuft of feathers on the back of their heads.
Another flower I’d never heard of before. This hardy kiwifruit’s branches were coming over a high garden fence.
A scarlet tiger moth resting on a brick wall. This brightly coloured, day-flying moth seems to be getting more common. Perhaps its range is extending towards the north.
More wild flowers from the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. Viper’s bugloss favoured the grassy areas, with a seeming preference for the same spots as wild oats. My picture is of a horned poppy which had also crossed into the grassy area, but normally they are another shingle specialist.
An oystercatcher striding along the edge of one of the pools at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. Another sieves under the water for food.
A flowering abutilon (Indian mallow), with branches coming over the wall of a garden next to the end of the line bus stop in Rye Harbour.
There was a clear contrast in the vegetation of the shingled area of the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. The shingle had broad stretches of bare pebbles, occasionally broken by one or other member a distinctive community of plants which could cope with the trying conditions. Elsewhere, all was what seemed like an unbroken carpet; many different grasses, interspersed with meadow wildflowers, some of them salt marsh specialities.
The only plants I noticed which managed to grow both sides of this divide were mallows, which happened to be in flower we were there.
Distamt shots of birds on the nest at the Rye Harbour nature Reserve, some with chicks nearby as well. There’s black headed gulls, an oystercatcher, and what are probably little terns in the series.
A second orchid in the long grass at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. Not far from the pyramid orchids were a few bee orchids. Once again, the grass was doing its best to hide the bee-imitating flowers.
The birds of Rye Harbour seemed to be more confiding than usual even outside the area of the actual Nature Reserve. This goldfinch was on a telegraph wire which crossed the road right by where the bus turned around. It didn’t give any signs of worry that I was almost directly below it.
On the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, a skylark landed on a fence post quite close by. It didn’t seem disturbed by human activity, but its attention was focussed in the opposite direction to where I was standing, so my view was mainly of the back of its head. Before takin=g off again, it did briefly turn so I managed to get on picture of the bird in profile.
Growing among the grass by a footpath on the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, a lot of wildflowers in flower at the time of our visit. Included among them, several pyramid orchids peeping through the grass leaves.