David

Taken on the same morning as the recent post, this picture features a gaggle of the Canada geese from West Park taking their first flight of the morning.

The dragonfly made a brief pause from its hunting, and rested on a late-blooming purple loosestrife flower.

A magpie on the search for food in a partly mown cornfield.

Dramatic colouring as the sun rose on the last day of September.

The weather later that day fitted with the old saying, “Red sky at morning …”

This is the same meadow brown butterfly shown in the first picture in yesterday’s post.

Two meadow brown butterflies were feeding on flowers in the same thistle patch in Barley Field. They seemed to be studiously ignoring one another.

One of the butterflies (above) had wings in immaculate condition; perhaps it was only recently hatched. The other’s wings were ragged.

Meadow browns look very similar to hedge browns
(yesterday’s post). A distinguished feature is that meadow browns have a single white spot in the “eye” on the forewing: hedge browns have two.

Early one morning after overnight rain, I noticed several slugs climbing up garden walls. This was one of them.

Acorns growing on an oak at the lower end of Barley Field. They had reached this stage of development at the end of August.

Hedge brown butterflies are also known as gatekeepers. This one was resting on a thistle in the meadow near the Smestow Valley Ranger Station.

This unusual-looking fungus was growing in two clumps on the opposite sides of a tree in West Park. There were warty or spiky protruberences on the upper surface.

The lower surface was slightly rippled, but there was no sign of gills or pores.

The yellow zone on the upper surface was much clearer on one side of the tree than the other.