Bank Holiday Monday early morning walk (Coombe Wood)

The car park was empty apart from the car that arrived just before me. As I parked a man got out of the other car carrying a large black rucksack, which I was pretty sure had camera equipment in. I remembered him taking teasel photos in the snow.

The flower beds by the entrance are so welcoming

The water was clear and the fish appeared to be swimming among the reflections

in fact the white fish looked to me as it if might be flying among the reflections

The man had set up his camera by the sunflowers.

I wandered in the other direction - up the path by the pond and along to the prairie beds where the bleached grasses wafted in the gentle breeze

I stood and watched two hover flies jostling for the best position on the last remaining pink flower on the other side of the path.

Bright yellow flowers their dome like centres opening up from the petal base up to the top

Golden Rain Tree pods

I was getting such a look from one of the cats who wasn't sure if it could be bothered to get up and say hello.

The Golden Rain Tree pods stick up around the tree in quite an unruly fashion.

Shaggy ends to these white petals.

Neat yellow petals

These are such strange seed pods - on bright pink stems

Tall yellow  flowers - fluffy white clouds bubbling across the blue sky.

A different kind of yellow flower - looking at the middle - so much going on in here!

These flowers look quite circular from a distance but close up you can see that their red petals have scalloped edges with orange borders - and the middles are producing rings of yellow dots (stamens and anthers)

A cluster at different stages of development. 

Pink thready plants.

Looking closer.

Standing among the plants (on the path) among the prairie beds.

These make a wonderful sound when the breeze moves them and they tap against each other.

The man with the camera stopped and had a chat. He was playing with a new gadget - a stabiliser for taking videos and had been videoing bees. I left him to it and headed into the woods where splashes of sunlight illuminated patches of leaves here and there.

A cluster of dead twigs hung from a tree with a network of spiders web which could only be seen from one side when the sunlight made the threads shimmer.

Tiny bobbly flowers.

 Movement attracted my attention to a young bird, preening on a branch above me.

Spindle berries - still green - not ready to open yet.

Strange remains from purple flowers with some white buds in the background (white flowers that come from these buds are shown later on).

Different shaped - spindle berries?

Slender lilac coloured petals and quite a tufty middle.

Stripy insect in each flower. I'm getting a little better at stripy insect identification - three bees and a hover fly.

A bee crawled away from the centre of this flower.

Suddenly a miniscule insect appeared in front of it.

Orange and white.

This bee was very well camouflaged on the deep yellow flower with yellow and brown centre.

Not sure what the stripy insect on this yellow flowers is (I spoke too soon about the improvement in my identification skills!) .

I like the frondy leaves of the cosmos (another excuse to photograph their starry middles!)

They won't be around much longer! I had to try and get some better photos of their amazing centres before they finish.

 

This insect must be a hover fly. (Surely?) 

Tall fronds now heavy with seeds - amazing colours and they look like seaweed to me.

These are the flowers that come from the white bobbly buds that are in the background of the photo with the odd leftovers of a purple flower. They were well lit up by the sunshine.

Seeds forming in some of the sunflowers.

Vine like climber with pale peachy flowers.

Bees were happy buzzing around the sunflowers.

Pollen sacs bulging.

 This one is looking a bit windswept.

I like the curvy flower against the straight stems in the background - caught mid dance?

From a distance this looked like a plain white butterfly flitting around the flower bed but it sat still long enough for me to discover it has smoky markings and looks quite furry.

Water sparkling over two small fish.

Quite an assortment of fish which were happy to stick around while I took photos.

Thank you very much for joining me.