I am visiting Barton Fields for a picture report every month this year.

The blue sky shows some vapour trails – more than previous weeks. There was also a lot of white cottony stuff blowing around in the air – tree seeds.

May has been mostly sunny and today was ‘the hottest day of the year so far‘ – according to Radio 4. The pools and marshy areas in Barton Fields are drying out.

There were lots of Common blue damselflies flitting about around the meadow.

The 20th May has been declared as World Bee Day and this acrobatic bee can be seen sucking the nectar from a Comfrey flower.

The Woody nightshade (or Bittersweet nightshade) is easy to identify. The purple and yellow flowers turn to poisonous red berries. They are fairly common but they look dangerous and are apparently very bitter, and so poison very few people.

There are areas covered with nettles, and on this particular nettle is an iridescent damselfly.

Wild flowers are appearing in masses in some places, such as Oxeye daisies,

Ragged robin and Buttercups.

Other flowers are more solitary such as this orchid.

There have been more people out walking and exploring nature, during the lockdown, and the pathways across the meadows have probably become more marked than they would be in an average year. We did cause a Pheasant to fly out in alarm.

I saw another photographer waiting patiently for damselflies and dragonflies by one wetland area. I enjoy seeing pictures from Barton Fields and elsewhere on other blogs, twitter feeds, and facebook. How things have moved on since the days we posted a film of 24 or 36 shots to Tru Print or took it in to Jessops to get it processed and printed.