Wildlife from Wolverhampton and nearby
The brown hawker dragonfly featured in the previous post eventually settled down to rest on some thistledown by the canal towpath, seemingly unworried that I was already standing nearby. From the pictures it was possible to confirm that it was a male: the sexes are somewaht similar in colour, but the females lack the “waist”, the narrowing where the thorax and abdomen join.
Brown hawker dragonfly, flying rapidly and erratically up and down over the canal at Castlecroft, defending its territory and hunting smaller insects which it catches on the wing. It was moving so fast and so irregularly that these were the nearest I got to pictures of it, out of a dozen or more shots where it was in the frame.
A rosebay willowherb, this one on Gospel End Common, at the stage where the last of the flowers had almost gone.
Meadow brown butterfly resting half-hidden on a grass stem, getting warm before it took proper flight for the day.
Russula mushroom growing through the leaf litter in Himley Plantation, the cap well nibbled by some hungry creature. Several russula species have similar greyish colours to their caps – this was most likely one of the commoner types.
Seed heads on a ragwort, the seeds ripening before they are spread by the wind. This ensures the seeds can be dispersed widely.
