A grey wagtail walking along the wall of prefab weir on the canal at Compton, pausing to pick up insects along the way. It was a male. The female briefly also flew in (last picture in the set) before heading off to the opposite bank. A little while later, he also went there.
Looking like decoratively painted geometrical sculptures, flowers on one of the larch trees. I think the pink and yellow flowers are the female ones, already pre-figuring the shape of the cones they will eventually form. The rather insignificant-looking yellow-brown tufts may be the male flowers.
Male blackbird using a garden fence as a vantage point. When it noticed my attention, it retreated behind a tree while keeping on watch.
A small patch of white violets in a quiet corner of the Castle Ground Park, Bridgnorth. I didn’t get close enough to smell them.
Tawny mining bee (Andrena fulva), quite common during the flowering season for fruit trees such as apple, pear, plum and cherry. They are solitary, and “mine” in the sense that they dig holes for their homes. Can sometimes be spotted emerging from lawns, playing fields, grassy banks and the like.
When the pond in Compton Park was created some years ago, the water and the surrounding marshy area were planted with a variety of wildflowers.
Marsh marigolds are one of the species which has thrived in the water. They are too far out from dry land (the wooden footbridge) to get up close, and quite hemmed in by the forest of bulrushes, so I needed a fairly long focal length to get these pictures.