This year’s four West Park cygnets and the parent birds by boating lake island. One of the adult swans has a taste for stretching up from the water to eat leaves from overhanging willows. Here one of the young birds was trying to do the same, but didn’t seem to be quite able to reach.
Flowers on a patch of umbellifers growing by the canal near the Meccano Bridge were an irresistible draw for several hoverflies on a sunny August morning.
Sycamore seeds with the blades which will let them fall gently in an autumn breeze, helicopter fashion, seen in early August when they were beginning to ripen.
Young magpie with scruffy dishevelled feathers prospecting for something to eat among the short grass in West Park.
Female common darter resting on the railing of the footbridge over the Compton Park pool yesterday. It seemed indifferent to human activity, even to close approaches.
Perhaps it was the same female featured ovipositing in yesterday’s post. These pictures were taken minutes after those, so it may have been recovering. Or it may have been another female, prominently visible to attract the attention of a male.
Cluster of ripening blackberries, and cluster where they have already ripened, where some of them have shrivelled after the long spell with hardly any rain.
