Wolves Wild

More of the ducks on the RSPB Bowling Green Marsh at Topsham. These are shovellers. There’s a snipe as well, half-hidden on the fleft in the first picture.

Samphire. Not the stuff which pops up on restaurant menus, which is marsh samphire. This is rock samphire, which gets a mention in King Lear, growing on the beetling cliffs of Dover.

This, more prosaically, was growing by the wall by the Goat Walk at Topsham.

Dunnock singing loudly in the land running along the RSPB reserve at Bowling Green Marsh, Topsham, defending its territory and advertising its presence.

Butterbur in a Devon lane, already turning to seed after flowering soon after the turn of the year.

The RSPB reserve at Bowling Green Marsh, Topsham, has an open access hide with scrapes right below the viewing windows. It’s often possible to get good views of ducks or waders in this part of the marsh, and reasonable pictures even with a medium powered telephoto lens. That was what I had for these pintails.

Mimosas are tropical trees. They can be grown outside in Britain in places with particularly mild winters. But even there they are vulnerable to untypical cold spells.

These trees can be seen while wandering the streets of Topsham. They looked very unhappy in the aftermath of the heavy snows of the “beast from the east”, which came in about this time of year a few years ago, but now look like they have fully recovered.