Pennywort, flowers budding

Pennywort, flowers budding

Pennywort, a plant with leaves supposedly resembling coins, with the flower buds developing. These were growing in the tnin soil by a small lane leading up the Malvern Hills.

Adventurous moorhen chick on canal

Adventurous moorhen chick on canal

One small moorhen chick swimming in the middle of the canal near Compton, with a parent bird keeping a watchful eye. Two or three other chicks were also in the water, but huddling the far bank, hidden be overhanging vegatation.

Large red damselfly resting on a leaf

Large red damselfly resting on a leaf

A lone large red damselfly rests on a reed leaf near the edge of the pond at Compton Park recently. The sole member of this species I have noticed on my visits to the pond this year, but it did mean I could now say I have seen all three types which had been there in earlier years.

Get back to your roots

Get back to your roots

Tree roots stretching out for a yard or more over hard, bare rock before they find any soil they can bury themselves in. One of the small roads heading up the hills from Great Malvern passes through a cutting. I guess these trees have been maturing since the road was made in the heyday of the Malverns as a spa resort in the nineteenth century.

Banded demoiselle damselflies mating

Banded demoiselle damselflies mating

Pair of banded demoiselle damselflies mating while they rested on a figwort growing by the canal more or less opposite the Wildside Centre. The male (blue and a lot easier to see when resting on vegetation) was almost certainly the same individual I had seen claiming the territory a couple of days earlier.