Category: David

Seven-spot ladybird warming itself in the sun as it rested on a leaf by the canal at Newbridge.

Pink flowers, not quite all finished opening, on a flowering current in a front garden at newbridge.

In a tree, almost directly above me, a magpie is watchful but knows it’s safe.

Scarlet elfcups, small but brightly coloured fungi, develop in the coldest months of winter. But they’re long lasting, and hang around, if sometimes partially nibbled, until the start of spring.

They grow on dead wood, fallen twigs and branches and the like. In recent years they have been scattered between the footpath in the Paddock on the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve and the Smestow Brook itself.

Second butterfly spotted this year. Minutes after a tortoiseshell landed neat the footpath by the canal at Castlecroft (yesterday’s post), a comma obligingly did the same.

Many hedges are formed mainly of rows of thorn bushes: either blacktho0rns or hawthorns. A quick way to tell which has been used from a distance is to see whether the leaves or the flowers are breaking first.

Blackthorn flower earlier than hawthorn, and their flowering season is pretty much over before the leaves appear. These blackthorn flowers are the first ones I spotted, when most other nearby trees of the species were still bare. A little later (perhaps now) a thick blackthorn hedge can look from a distance like it’s covered in a white mist.

Hawthorn is the reverse. Leaf buds start appearing about the same time as blackthorn flowers. The leaves will be fully out before the flowers open. When? There’s a clue in an alternative name for the plant: maY.