The middle of last month, as a cold, dry spell was about to give way to a series of wet days, not quite so cold. As I walked to Bantock Park, I thought that it had just about kept above freezing on the previous night. Once in the park, some patches of frost quickly proved me wrong.
On the pond, a tin, thin layer of ice: Bantock House is in the background.
A female blackbird searching for food in short grass by a footpath in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve. She was very near the hazel with the catkins which featured in a post yesterday.
I didn’t notice the thrush trying to photobomb the last shot until I got home and developed the pictures.
Crocuses which had been planted to come up as a tightly clustered bunch. The first picture was taken almost a week earlier than the others, when the flowers were still buds which were just beginning to open.
Most of the ten or a dozen shovellers which had been overwintering on the West park lake have already departed for wherever they go in the breeding season. This pair have stuck around, at least for the moment.
I thought they had been heading for their preferred feeding area, to swim around in a tight circle with their beaks just under the water, filtering out the particles of whatever it is they eat. They reached the spot, but then put on a burst of speed, heading off in a completely different direction.
Yellow / green catkins against the bright blue sky of one of the rare sunny mornings recently. They were on a tall hazel tree by the footpath along the Smestow Brook by Newbridge.
This is the same pair of swans in the post yesterday. It was now a half hour or so later, and the swans were still engaging in the same pattern of behaviour.
They had moved a little further away, and across to the far side of the canal – leaving them partially hidden by an overhanging bush. But they were still making the synchronised movements. It was too cold to hang around, so I never saw them mating.