Wolves Wild

Small insect prospecting one of a group of coltsfoots. The flowerscolour seemed to be echoed where the sun was catching the insect’s carapace.

The flowers of these violets had a distinctly magenta colour.

Growing by the towpath just a couple of hundred yards from the white violets featured the day before yesterday.

Bumble bee needing to carry on beating its wings as it holds on to a pussy willow catkin, gathering pollen.

The mass of delicate-looking flowers which open before the leaves hiding the vicious spikes on blackthorn trees.

These were growing along the line of the Finchfield Brook in Turner’s Field.

Catkin on a female pussy willow tree.

The catkins look clearly different to those on male trees.

White violet growing by the towpath opposite the Wildside Activity Centre.

Mass of tadpoles close together near the edge of Turner’s Field pond. They were so small they may have been newly hatched, though the final picture was taken two days after the others.

I went back to the same pond a week later, and could only see a few, larger, tadpoles. Some of them will have spread through out the water. Others will have been eaten: by ducks, fish and even their own siblings.

Bumble bee which was visiting what seemed like every single flower on a gorse bush.

Clumps of frog spawn started to appear towards the end of March. One favoured site was the pond in Turner’s Field in the Smestow Valley, another the pool near the road crossing the golf course on Penn Common.

The woods behind Northycote Farm have some of the first bluebells to flower. These were from some of the first small patches which were beginning to open yesterday.

Butterbur – a distinctive robust plant which prefers damp places, so is often found growing near our canals. The cone of flowers on this one were just beginning to develop.

Squirrel hiding itself in a mistletoe bush, not very effectively, as it watched me watching it.