Wolves Wild

Perennial sow thistle – well, there were still plenty of flowers on the plants remaining into autumn. So they were still attracting insects, with a hoverfly and a bee con testing access.

Bees emerging from their nest, in a recess high in the leaning wall of Bridgnorth Castle.

A contrast in textures: an acorn, perhaps just about full sized, but still green and unripe. Emerging from the roughened surface of the cup, the nut itself looks perfectly smoot.

Growing on the same oak tree, a gall, growing where a knopper gall wasp had laid an egg in new growth on one of the twigs. Some local oaks this year have had large numbers of these galls developing.

Garden spiders, sometimes called cross spiders, become more noticeable at this time of year, often sitting in the centre of their orb webs. The females swell up as they get ready to lay eggs a little later in the autumn.

It had been raining heavily overnight, but the web was in a sheltered spot between the lower twigs of a hazel bush. The spider, indeed a female, was in the middle, undisturbed.

White water lilies on the surface of Old Nursery Pond. The first flowers had opened, most were yet still buds. They, too, should be open now.

A speckled wood butterfly resting on a sunny wall, or rather on the one sizeable patch of lichen on the wall. In a quiet alley by St mary’s church, Bridgnorth.