Holly blue butterflies are tricky to photograph. They’re one of the smaller British butterflies. In the air, their flight involves so many seemingly random twists and turns that I find it impossible to get one in focus. When they land, as this one did, they spend most of the time with their wings folded. In that position, the deeper blue of their upper wings is hidden.
There seems to be some controversy about how the Judas tree gets its name (at least according to the five minutes effort I put into an internet search). Is it from the New Testament character (various convoluted stories)? Because early Mormons fancied some kind of resemblance to an Old Testament character (but wouldn’t that make it a Joshua tree)? Or a “false friends” translation from its French name, which actually means tree of Judea (its region of origin is in the eastern Mediterranean)?
Whatever, its red-purple flowers appear before the leaves in the early spring. This one is planted near the Conseervatory in West Park.
A week and a half after they hatched, the first sighting of one of the coot chicks out on the water. Even then, it never ventured more than an inch or two from the nest. Its siblings stayed in the safety of dry land, with the resident parent also sitting tight watching over them.
Chocolate mining bees (Andrena scotica) are one of the earlier bees to appear in spring. Since the weather began to be warmer, there seem (finally!) to have been quite a few around.
One, two and now three different sets of the West Park greylag geese have now hatched goslings. The first to emerge, six, seem to get bigger every day. The next trio are following in their footsteps. The third set, of four, were possibly just one day old when these pictures were taken.
When I first arrived, all three families were in the same general area, on the lake shore near the bandstand. But someone got a bit too close. The adult birds led the goslings on to the water, to move to a quieter spot. Two of the families got out opposite the Conservatory and on to the nearest patch of grass. The other one sailed under the bridge to a more distant spot.
The black and yellow markings are warning to any potential predator that this tiger moth caterpillar is poisonous. The spiky hairs all along the body are a further deterrent, as are the glassy spikes on the leaf. The caterpillar is actually resting on one of the discarded catkins from a birch tree. I had to look twice to chech that was vegetable rather than some other species of caterpillar.