Wolves Wild

The lime trees seem to have had an even longer than usual flowering season than usual this year. But it’s now over, and the seeds are finally beginning to ripen.

The garden in front of a block of flats. The raised lawn which regularly throws up several species of mushroom each year in their due seasons. There’s already been one set of blushers, much smaller than the usual size. They’ve now gone, to be replaced further along the lawn by others, size back to normal.

Poppies seen on a short walk in Wolverhampton city centre (between the city bus station and the Great Western pub as it happens).

The poppies were all growing wild. There’s at least two different species represented even in this small sample. One kind had flowers on stalks only a few inches tall, with different shaped leaves to the taller ones.

Frog resting on a piece of wood. Some pondweed leaves are decorating one flank of the frog, sticking when it emerged from water.

A grasshopper flew out of a patch of rough vegetation and landed on the road near me.

Grasshoppers are very wary of anyone getting near them, so even with my lens of quite a high telephoto setting these record shots were the best I could manage.

Cinnabar moth caterpillars, busy chomping their way through all the foliage of the ragwort they’re on. The yellow and black stripes are a warning to any potential predators that they are poisonous: the poison absorbed from the ragwort they’ve eaten. If that wasn’t enough, they are covered in spiky looking hairs to give an unpleasant mouth feel.