Category: David

A turtle suns itself on a fallen log by one of the islands in West Park lake. It’s been IDed on iNaturalist as a pond slider, a species native to northern Mexico and southern U.S.  They are common pets, and too commonly abandoned in ponds and pools.

We first spotted this one in the spring of 2020, spending hours basking in the sun on hot days. It’s been in very much the same area on hot days every year since; more regularly in some years than others. People have told us it was already an established resident for a few years before we first noticed it.

Hanging over the water from the canal at Compton, a hemlock water dropwort, looking like its flowers were about to open.

Often when plants have common names ending in wort, it’s because they used to be thought to have medicinal properties. Commonly, this was wecause of some supposed resemblance to some body part: bladderwort, liverwort, toothwort. Not a mistake to be made with this plant

A female mallard with three ducklings on the canal at Compton in the middle of last month. The ducklings looked very young and small, probably hatched earlier that morning.

The small number of ducklings and the seeming lack of caution of the mother letting them swim close to the canal-side footpath as people and dogs passed close by meant we suspected this may have been her first ever brood.

A cuckoo heard in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve, within the Wolverhampton city boundary, 25th May 2025.

Possibly one of two birds, perhaps passing through. There were reports of other cuckoos at Perton and on the Doxey marshes at Stafford  that during that week.

Can be heard calling (faintly) at about the twenty second mark.

Green veined white butterfly, smallest of the whites and the one that I at least need to see the underwing for a definite ID. This one was systematically going from flower to flower on a patch of blue alkanet, staying long enough on each flower for me to get a shot in.

Eventually, it did give me a glimpse of its underwing. The first picture in this set, but actually the last one I took before someone came along the canal footpath with a dog, and the insect retreated.

The common dogwood is a native bush, which can be found in woodland as well as gardens. It has bright red wood, and fruit which appears well into the winter.

This is a giant dogwood in someone’s front garden. Its original habitat in in the far end of the Eurasian continent: China, Japan. It’s definitely a tree, which dwarfs the common species. The white leaves are striking; even more so in these pictures, with the flowers a similar colour.