Wolves Wild

The woody remains of an umbellifer from last summer, standing up in the Paddock in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve.

A male house sparrow which spent some time eating seeds from a window seed tray.

Robins, house sparrows and a blue tit feeding at a window bird feeding tray. An experiment in slow motion video. Set to show at one quarter speed. Uploaded without a sound track.

An experiment in slow motion. The video was not filmed on a slo-mo setting, just edited as such after the event when it was suggested to me that this might show more detail. It does.

A great spotted woodpecker high in a tree on the edge of Bantock Park. Hard to spot among the maze of branches – the camera also struggled to focus on the bird rather than one or another of the branches. It’s just possible to make out the red patch on the bird’s throat in at least one picture; a mark that it was a male.

A ginkgo tree by the side of Compton Road, a lone female tree in the middle of a line of male ones. Regularly in autumn, the tree has a lot of fruit. Although many fall on the pavement, there’s still plenty on the tree as we head towards spring.

Five minutes or so after the redwings had retreated to the refuge of the trees (see yesterday’s post), two or three of the boldest decided it was safe enough to come back down and resume the search for food.