Wolves Wild

Marmalade hover fly, a small hoverfly. There is a chance of seeing one at any time of year.

There’s been a gap in posts for the last couple of days because I’ve just had an unexpected visit to new Cross Hospital to have a pacemaker fitted. For the next few weeks, as I recover from the operation, I will be posting less than usual, and relying on pictures already accumulated.

The service and the staff at the Heart and Lung Centre were, as ever, wonderful.

Mullein moth caterpillar on what was a rapidly disappearing butterfly bush leaf. Pictures taken over the course of four days as I kept trying to find a time when its head wasn’t out of sight,lowered to disappear the leaf it was standing on.

I went back again the next day, to find that it was now the caterpillar which was disappeared, presumably as a meal for one or other of the invertebrate-eating birds which haunt the garden.

One of the Tettenhall buzzards, midday, circling over the Barley Field, using the warm air rising from the field to climb.

Ten flies. all different species.

Azure damselflies by the Old Nursery Pond, resting on the waterside vegetation as they get into position to mate.

The male is the bright blue colour which gives the species its name. The female a paler green, normally harder to spot.

Rat, West Park. Pre-pandemic, any rat spotting someone nearby would immediately head for the cover of some undergrowth.

This one just carried on wandering around, pausing two or three times to face me directly, trying to stare me out.