Thankyou to Gill-Paul or Gill and Paul for these pictures that tell the story of how a very tired swan was headed from the market place to the Thames.

Thanks to Ashley for sending pictures of a Heron and sunsets from his phone.

Ashley says “I spotted the ‘Apex Predator’ doing a spot of fishing under the first arch of Abingdon Bridge.”

By the banks of the River Ock, between Tesco and the Ladygrove Estate, the flowers of Himalayan Balsam provide colour where once there were just nettles and brambles.

It gives more nectar than native flowers and so attracts the insects. Pinch the seedpods and they explode sending their seeds into the river some metres away.

Himalayan Balsam is considered an invasive species. Groups helped eradicate it from the Ock Valley Walk nearer to town. But it thrives in the empty fields between Tesco and the Ladygrove estate, in view of Abingdon Motorcycles.

A swan family was on the Mill Stream yesterday

with six cygnets.

The day before yesterday there were another four cygnets, with parents nearby, on the St Helen’s slipway.

None of them had been ringed by the swan uppers at the start of the school holidays. My blog report about a decline in swan numbers, based on Swan Upping catches, could have got it wrong.