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.
This little plant was an inch or so high. It was growing from the mortar between two of the stones on the top of a front garden wall.
Redwings in Bantock Park. They had taken refuge in trees when a man with a dog came a little too close to where they were feeding on the ground (see yesterday’s mistle thrush post).
When they had been on the ground, it was really obvious that the mistle thrush was a lot bigger than the redwings. his size contrast was magnified when they had flown onto branches: the redwings were it trees farther from where I was standing. They were also closely surrounded by a maze of twigs, harder to spot than the bigger bird which was against a background of the open sky.
Isolated among the litter of the leaves which fell last autumn, a lone crocus with a flower just on the point of opening.