David

Common knapweed (Centaurea nigra), yet another of the wildflowers which has been encouraged in teh wetland area around the Compton Park pond.

There’s a tiny insect of some sort visiting the flower too.

Two magpies in West Park, prospecting for food in one of the areas where people leave peanuts in the grass for squirrels. I’m guessing they were young birds from their lack of caution near the busy footpath.

The pods are a sign that brooms are related to the likes of peas and beans. The hairs will discourage animals from eating them, with their doubtless tender and fleshy seeds inside.

The meadow brown butterflies seem to be acting particularly wary this year. This one kept fluttering by keeping its distance.

And this one kept landing in long grass, as if trying to be too inconspicuous to be seen but still able to bask in the sun.

Great willowherb, seen over a couple of visits to the Compton Park pond. During theis time, the flowers went from buds about to open, through to fully open and already fertilized by visiting insects.

This year’s greylag goslings in West Park. All of them and both sets of parents were together in a very spread-out group, not just those pictured here.

They’ve grown so fast, they are now as big as the older birds. It’s now quite hard telling which ones are the young. Slight differences in the patterns of the plumage, and the colour of the legs. The easiest way was watching their behaviour. They younger were giving all their attention to eating. The older ones were focused on watching for danger, just having an occasional nibble.

UPDATE: These pictures were taken at the very edge of June. I visited the park early this morning, and saw a flock of twenty-four greylags grazing on one of the areas of short grass. That’s a much bigger group of greylags than I’ve ever seen in the park previously. It presumably included this year’s goslings. If so, I couldn’t tell which ones they were, though someone who knows more about birds might have been able to.