David

Just a little upstream from the loop in the Severn almost enclosing the centre of Shrewsbury, a mandarin duck, a drake, swimming in the river. It looked well fed and healthy, as far as it was possible to tell from the far bank.

Globe water lilies, just as the flowers were beginning to open. These were growing in the slower current at the edge of the Severn, seen from the riverside footpath in the Quarry.

Ladybirds: red with black spots, black with red spots (some of which have another black dot in the middle). They are all the recent interloper, harlequin ladybirds.

A roadside wild poppy, two stems from the same plant, seen at the same time.

One topped by its flower.

On the other, the flower has already done its work. The petals have been shed, the seed-case and its contents are beginning to ripen.

Attingham Hall, with a very extensive park, is a national Trust property near Shrewsbury. In the pasture, not far from a herd of grazing cows and calves, there are two corvids in the grass.

One of the birds – they were rooks – was spending some time feeding the other.

An adult green dock beetle rests on an alkanet leaf. Perhaps one of the pair responsible for producing the mass of voracious young which had been busy stripping nearby dock leaves (yesterday’s post)