Category: David

A patch of stonecrop on the edge of a car park, a mass of flowers which were attracting several bumble bees.

One small moorhen chick swimming in the middle of the canal near Compton, with a parent bird keeping a watchful eye. Two or three other chicks were also in the water, but huddling the far bank, hidden be overhanging vegatation.

A lone large red damselfly rests on a reed leaf near the edge of the pond at Compton Park recently. The sole member of this species I have noticed on my visits to the pond this year, but it did mean I could now say I have seen all three types which had been there in earlier years.

Tree roots stretching out for a yard or more over hard, bare rock before they find any soil they can bury themselves in. One of the small roads heading up the hills from Great Malvern passes through a cutting. I guess these trees have been maturing since the road was made in the heyday of the Malverns as a spa resort in the nineteenth century.

Pair of banded demoiselle damselflies mating while they rested on a figwort growing by the canal more or less opposite the Wildside Centre. The male (blue and a lot easier to see when resting on vegetation) was almost certainly the same individual I had seen claiming the territory a couple of days earlier.

A blue-tailed damselfly resting on the decking by the Compton Park pond, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine, and sufficiently undisturbed to let me get close enough for these pictures.