A pair of swans on the Avon just upstream from Stratford with their five cygnets, then settled ashore for the young birds to preen their downy feathers.
Yellow waterlily, River Avon
Growing in the River Avon by Lucy’s Mill footbridge, a yellow waterlily in flower.
Hornet mimic hoverfly, close-up
Not a hornet (yesterday’s post) but a stingless and vegetarian hoverfly which has evolved to look like a hornet as a way of discouraging predators.
Hornet capture
Nature red in tooth, claw and more. A hornet captures a bee (honey bee?), immobilises or kills it, they carries it off to its nest.
Heron and buzzard overhead
I thought at first it was crows mobbing a buzzard. When I looked properly, one of the birds was indeed a buzzard. The other was a heron, possibly the young bird pictured in a post a few days ago.
Teazles, Nature Reserve, Stratford
Teazles, recently flowered, in the recently created local nature reserve by the river in Stratford on Avon. The plant was actually a lot more abundant there before it was landscaped into a nature reserve. It had been the dominant vegetation in rough ground, the former site of the town’s landfill site in the middle of the last century, now converted into a pool and scrape.