Today’s post comes thanks to my brother. We’re staying with him in Cheltenham, and having spent the afternoon in the town, I was looking for a more wild space, so we walked back through the Pilley Bridge nature reserve, entering via the Community Orchard:

Sadly, the lovingly built wildlife home had been burnt out – destroying at least half  a mature tree in the process. But things improved as we moved through the site.

We weren’t sure what had been working on the entrance to this nest box, but found another which had been similarly enlarged a little farther along the path. Any ideas?

There were elder, bramble and wild rose flowers aplenty and a variety of lower-growing flora:

There were various fungi (or possibly moulds):

In the water there were little fish (failed again on those), and bright, darting flies (poor picture, but amazed to have got a picture at all). There were more flies swarming over the water, and enough midges to make me feel decidedly itchy.

And finally there was this – which might, or might not, have been a stickleback nest:

And if all that were not enough, we got home to this: not good news for the flowers, but pretty spectacular – the caterpillar of the mullein moth:

All in all, pretty wild!

PS: And just how many mealworms can one blackbird carry at once?

(He wouldn’t leave some and come back a second time, because he had to chase off another young male whilst he was feeding).