David

By the middle of July, the surviving West Park cygnets had grown almost to adult size, and were spending quite a lot of their time stretched out on lawns preening to remove their juvenile downy feathers.

Acorns from the same oak tree as those pictured in a post a few days ago. These pictures taken three weeks or so later, by which time the nuts had filled out considerably.

A mallard mother with one lone duckling on the lake at West Park, seen during a visit to the park in July.

A yellow shell moth resting on leaves in the daytime. Apparently quite a common moth, though I don’t recall ever having seen another one.

In the middle of July, an almost full-grown coot chick standing between its parents, all of them grooming their feathers.

Acorns just beginning to develop on an oak tree, as they were in mid-July.