Back in 2011, Wightwick Manor held some sort of open day on a June weekend (National Trust properties usually have them one weekend in September during World Heritage week). We took advantage to have a good look around the grounds.
As we walked around the pond, this dragonfly was climbing a leaf as it emerged from its aquatic juvenile stage, almost ready to take to the wing as an adult.
One of the fields at the corner of the Himley crossroads had a spectacular display of poppies back at this time in 2010. This picture was taken standing by the fence, but the view was even more impressive from the top deck of the Wolverhampton – Stourbridge bus.
A pair of swans with their five cygnets on the lake at West Park. The cygnets were still cute in their juvenile down, but had already begun to grow somewhat.
Two of them were already bold enough to set off swimming on their own, away from the immediate protection of the mother. They seemed to be heading directly towards were we were standing on the bank, perhaps hoping for bread. As they got nearer, they veered off, then turned round and headed back to safety.
In the distance, I saw two coots. One had fluffy infant down, clearly a chick despite now being grown to adult size. The other was in silhouette. I assumed it was one of the parent birds. Coot adults invest a lot of parental care. They share brooding duties on the unhatched eggs, and both of them carry on feeding their chicks even when the young have grown to full size, and look like they should be able to (and indeed do) get their own food.
I moved somewhat nearer to try to get a better angle to picture them from. As I focussed the camera, the previously silhouetted bird dived. When it surfaced, vegetation in its beak, I could see that it too was a chick. Instead of eating the food itself, it immediately gave it to the other chick, passing it from beak to beak in the way a parent normally would.
For several years, the pond slider turtle has had a solitary existence in the lake at West Park. On some warm days in spring and summer, it emerged and is still emerging to spend hours on a fallen tree trunk, basking in the sun.
We were surprised last month. There’s a second tree trunk, lying end to end with the one favoured by the pond slider. One morning, the pond slider was in its favourite spot. At the far end of the second fallen log there was a second turtle.
This one was somewhat smaller. Like the original, those parts of its skin visible peeking out of the carapace had yellow streaks, but making distinctly different patterns. The newcomer is a yellow-bellied slider: one of the two sub-species found in addition to the standard members of the type.
The bird is tiny, despite the image being heavily cropped. Even though I know where it is, I find it hard to spot as its plumage merges with the varying dark tones of the shadows and lichens of the tree trunk (it’s very near the centre of the image).
It’s a treecreeper, creeping up one of the trees in West Park. The bird’s presence had first been disclosed by the song recognition function of the Merlin app on a smartphone.