A female mallard with three ducklings on the canal at Compton in the middle of last month. The ducklings looked very young and small, probably hatched earlier that morning.
The small number of ducklings and the seeming lack of caution of the mother letting them swim close to the canal-side footpath as people and dogs passed close by meant we suspected this may have been her first ever brood.
A cuckoo heard in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve, within the Wolverhampton city boundary, 25th May 2025.
Possibly one of two birds, perhaps passing through. There were reports of other cuckoos at Perton and on the Doxey marshes at Stafford that during that week.
Can be heard calling (faintly) at about the twenty second mark.
Green veined white butterfly, smallest of the whites and the one that I at least need to see the underwing for a definite ID. This one was systematically going from flower to flower on a patch of blue alkanet, staying long enough on each flower for me to get a shot in.
Eventually, it did give me a glimpse of its underwing. The first picture in this set, but actually the last one I took before someone came along the canal footpath with a dog, and the insect retreated.
The common dogwood is a native bush, which can be found in woodland as well as gardens. It has bright red wood, and fruit which appears well into the winter.
This is a giant dogwood in someone’s front garden. Its original habitat in in the far end of the Eurasian continent: China, Japan. It’s definitely a tree, which dwarfs the common species. The white leaves are striking; even more so in these pictures, with the flowers a similar colour.
A very hungry caterpillar eating away at a blue alkanet. This individual will have hatched some time last summer from one of the eggs laid by a scarlet tiger moth, a brightly coloured day-flying moth.
The caterpillar survived the winter in some safe and snug niche. It re-emerged in April for a final feeding up. It’s now disappeared again to metamorphose, shortly to reappear as one of this year’s adult moths.
Some horse chestnuts have red flowers, rather than the usual off-white ones. They’re still arranged in candelabra.
They can sometimes be spotted, like this one, in large domestic gardens. It’s also keeping an eye out for them in parks; there’s a row of three in Bantock Park.