Wolves Wild

Lots of the pictures I took of the Severn otter captured it in the process of diving. Some showed an arched back, some a muscular tail in a plume of foam, and some just a ring of disturbed water.

An old birdsnest, fallen so that its entrance hole was pointing downwards. Discarded fabric has been incorporated into the structure.

‘The Shire Country Parkin south Birmingham runs along the River Cole. The area supposedly provided the inspiration for the similarly named land in J.J.R.Tolkien’s imagined world. It was still countryside when the author lived there as a boy.

The park is now a green corridor in the residential suburbs of the city.

Several of the roads which interrupt the park cross the river by fords, not bridges.

Mass of purple crocuses by the canal basin in Stratford on Avon, and others in the garden of the Shakespeare Institute in the town. This is in what was the house of the popular Victorian novelist Marie Corelli. The building in the background is her tower folly – that is, the elaborate garden shed she used to do her writing in.

In the last few days I’ve noticed a couple of goose nests left unattended with a single egg. Are the shifts in the weather making the birds abandon their nests?

Small fern surrounded by luxuriant moss growing in the damp and shade on the wall of a bridge carrying a railway line over the Birmingham Canal.

Jackdaws delving in the muddy ground of the boar’s and hensenclosures at Northycote Farm. There were about thirty jackdaws altogether.

A stroll along the canal last weekend, and the first lesser celandines were beginning to flower beside the towpath. I always think they are a sign that late winter is finally giving way to spring.

The fat balls on the feeder at Northycote Farm were packed with a variety of seeds. At least three long-tailed tits kept on eating as much as they could.

Dog’s mercury is a woodland plant which flowers early in spring, before the trees get their leaves back to put the ground in shade.

The buds of these plants in the Northycote Farm woods were just beginning to open as the inconspicuous white flowers.

A long-tailed tit prospecting the bare branches of a tree in search of insects to eat.

A group of the brent geese overwintering on the Exe estuary, hanging out on Dawlish Warren Golf Course. The birds seemed totally unworried when groups of golfers passed only yards from them.