These black swans are a long way from their native Australia. They are among the descendants of birds which were deliberately introduced in Dawlish, south Devon, back in the last century. Now they can be found not only in Dawlish itself, but popping up anywhere along the coast between Teignmouth and the Exe estuary.
These were at Topsham, just below the tidal limit of the Exe.
Yet another scarlet tiger moth that landed and rested for a prolonged period on a vertical surface – this time a wooded one.
The West Park cygnets out on one of the lawns, cleaning the down they will soon be loosing. Also lost; one of the five cygnets. The others were still growing fast, and seemed to be thriving.
Teazles: plants with serious defences built in. The flowers are spiky. The leaves are spiky. The stems are spiky.
I was taking a few pictures of what I thought were water boatmen (in fact they were actually backswimmers) on the surface of the pond in Compton Park. Then I noticed a couple of small fish swimming near the surface of the water.
When I got the pictures home and looked at them on a bigger screen, it turned out that there weren’t any fish. Instead they were young newts, and different species of newts at that. One was a smooth newt, the other a palmate newt.
A male azure blue damselfly hovers, clasping a female just behind her head, in preparation for mating. Then the pair take off. The final picture in the sequence was the only one I managed with the air in the air. Most of their bodies were hidden behind the leaf of a read, but it’s just possible to make out that the female hadn’t yet curled round her abdomen to form the so-called heart configuration. Then they moved off deeper into the vegetation.