Wolves Wild

Looking down from the wooden bridge at one of the plants which has become established at the margin of the new Compton Park water feature.

This cicada had come out from its chrysalis only minutes before.

The pale green colour fades to a pattern of shades of grey in more mature adults, helping them to blend into the background in a dusty region.

Lily I spotted as I passed someone’s front garden. There are yellow patches where pollen has fallen onto the lower petals.

Crane fly, aka daddy long legs: this one landed in a hawthorn bush right next to a damselfly I was photographing.

Heavy growth of lichen on a short exposed patch of a bough of one of the bushes forming the hedge of a narrow country lane near Worfield.

Female beautiful demoiselle damselfly standing on a hazel leaf, and a male (below) on a hawthorn leaf. Both bushes were in the hedge by the towpath at Castlecroft.

Barley Field in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve is left unmown until late August to encourage wild flowers.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/davea2007/9528935000

White oleander flowers against a background of a Mediterranean sky.

It’s a cricket – Eupholidoptera chabrieri to be precise. It was in France. So it’s a French cricket.

Greater spotted woodpecker, probably a young male, just visible as patches of red in the centre of the picture.

Apparently the bird is a regular visitor to the trees around the Combermere Arms beer garden.