Wolves Wild

Some golden rod flowering in a front garden was proving a magnet for a lot of insects in search of pollen or nectar, including this hoverfly.

Two of the flowers on a poppy growing near Worfield a few days ago.

A white campion flowering by a roadside a few days ago,

The flowers of old man’s beard give little hint of the whispiness which will develop as the seeds ripen. A bumble bee is trying to hide in the upper picture.

A cross spider with a web in the low bushes by the city centre Asda car park. None of the other shoppers seemed to have noticed it was there.

I started posting to this blog exactly three years ago today.

The blog is now heading for two thousand posts, and for four thousand pictures. There have also been thirty-odd videos; the shortest lasting just a few seconds, the longest about fourteen minutes.

To mark the anniversary, here is a re-posting of the short video of a, sadly often missed, mechanical sculpture in the city centre.

The wolf in sheep’s clothing is above the main entrance to the Art Gallery on Lichfieid Steet. It repeats its routine every on hour on the hour – actually, last time I checked, it got going a couple of minutes after the hour.

More details at the original post.

Delicately coloured hol;yhock flowers seen in a subdued early morning light.

The golden y moth gets its name from the pale marking which can be seen here half way along the wing.

This one had flown indoors and landed on a sheet of paper.

The glistening effect on these honeysuckle berries and leaves may have been even more pronounced if I hadn’t taken the picture in an interval between two very heavy showers.

Enthusiasts for DIY sloe gin are in for a disappointment this year. The weather earlier this year meant that very few blackthorn flowers set fruit.

Today’s pictures are two views of the same sloe. They were taken at the same time as the one featured the day before yesterday. That sloe was on the next bush. They were the only two berries I noticed in a quick look around a patch of bushes which are normally covered in sloes at this time of year.

These tiny mushrooms were growing at the base of a tree trunk.

Bryony berries beginning to ripen (above) and an image in shades of green (below).