Category: David

As the local authority financial cuts bite, staff like the parkies face ever-increasing workloads. One result is an ever bolder and almost certainly growing rat population in West Park (probably all the parks).

I rarely visit West Park these days without seeing at least one rat – emerging from the ground cover, going about its business and retreating back into the ground cover.

Often, the retreat is prompted when someone or some dog gets too close to the rat’s zone of comfort. Sometimes, it is when the rat has succeeded in grabbing some of the food visitors have left out for the birds or squirrels.

The rat in this picture headed straight for the brightly coloured litter: possibly a discarded bread wrapper with a little bread still inside. I just had time to get the one picture. A moment later the rat had seized the litter, and dragged it into the longer vegetation which can be seen in the background.

Flowers from a couple of the plants in a small patch of yellow archangel right by the canal junction at Aldersley – one of several species of possible survivals from a small garden back in the days when Aldersley Junction was an important transport meeting point. These pictures were taken in April 2014.

Bluebell Walk is the name given to the footpath through one of the patches of woodland remaining on the edge of the Perton estate. These pictures show a small sample of the bluebells in flower there this year.

Stone wall, well covered in moss and with a variety of plants, including primroses flowering. The wall was in the village (or perhaps hamlet) of Roughton off the Wolverhampton – Bridgnorth road, and the pictures were taken in late April 2015

Former sandstone quarry by the River Worfe, near the village of Rindleford outside Bridgnorth.

Nowadays, the quiet spot is accessible only by a footpath which runs between the quarry and the river.

It’s not a nettle, not dead, and the flowers are somewhat off-white. But the plant’s general shape and leaves look like a nettle. “Dead” just means it doesn’t sting – because it isn’t a nettle. And the flowers are whitish (a related type is called the red dead nettle, though the flowers look a bit purple to me).