Category: David

Common daisies are in flower almost all round the year. But there’s a brief moment in spring when they reach their height. Lawns where they haven’t been persecuted, and other areas of short grass, can seem coverred in daisies.

It’s been a cold spring. While all the usual butterfly species have been around, I’ve noticed far fewer of them than usual. The exception, possibly, is speckled woods. here are a couple of them, sunning themselves to warm up for the day.

Apple blossom on a day when it was just beginning to open. These were on one of the crab apples at the back of Compton Lock.

The fringe of the West Park island favoured by nest-building coots is the same area favoured by the sunning turtle (previous two posts). Here the coot chicks venturing out from the nest are directly between me and the turtle as one of the parent birds feeds them.

The adult then started flapping its wings. Perhaps a warning to put some more clear water between them and the reptile.

The West Park turtle, looking as serene as ever, in one of its regular spots for spending the day lying in the sun.

A visit to West Park over the Spring Bank Holiday weekend, where at least four sets of coots with nests by the same island in the lake had recently hatched chicks All the chicks looked like they had hatched no earlier than the previous day.

Chicks from three of those broods feature in these pictures, along with their attentive parents. The other set were still on the nest. The nest itself was farther from the shore, and hidden by an overhanging willow. And, from what could be glimpsed, it seemed that those chicks might only have hatched minutes previously.