I think that is a cricket TW

Yes, a green cricket
They are lucky as they symbolise hope. Nice one TW!
Oh and by the way, welcome Sherry!

I've never seen a cricket except in pictures, and didn't even realise they came in green! It does look like a grasshopper though minus the wings.

Here's what I know as the Post Office tower although now the BT tower since it was split up and privatised for the phones. Crystal Palace TV tower is in the middle on the horizon.

A photo from today's bike ride. Shows how dry it's been recently. This section of the canal has nearly dried up:

Hollyhock in the cottage garden

Welcome Sherry .. lovely pic!

We had a quick trip this weekend and here we are .. nearly home ...

This Rainbow Lorikeet made a detour to snack on the seed bell hanging from the Hills Hoist.

Nature seems to have thought of all the best colour schemes before we started.
Office blocks in Sunbury. Unlike most countries these sort of views are pretty much the exception over here so still find them unusual.

Sherry: nice poppies and hollyhocks!

TW: My best guess is that your insect is an Oak Bush-Cricket (Meconema thalassinum). Two things I know for SURE is that:
1) it's immature, as it has no wings, so that means it can't breed yet and
2) it is female - that slightly upraised "tail-like appendage" is an ovipositor (not a male appendage as many people might think lol)

Copago: lovely shot of the Australian pelicans - I especially like how you caught the bird with the light behind it - shows how really pink the beak pouch is. Would make a nice watercolour painting.

Our white pelicans aren't pure white (you can usually only find those around Africa). Ours do have some black on the edges of the wings, but you can't see it unless they are in flight.. as in this pic, when I came a little too close to their breeding roosts. They are such big ungainly birds on land, it makes you wonder how they ever get into the air at all lol

A very new house in Highgate

David, that is one of the very few houses that you have posted that I cannot like
It looks a bit like an electricity sub station. Really boring. I loved all the others though!

Sara, those modernist lines (the design itself is about 100 years old from Germany) really do seem to polarize people. I love them myself and would be only too happy to live in one, but the British councils in the 30s onwards disliked them so much the first large estate was built at Dartington Hall (where I first got to know them in 1968) as it belonged to the trust. There are some scattered around the country but more in Germany and Holland.

I have a collection of Hampstead Garden Suburb gardens today to last me the rest of the week if I took nothing else, but will add them all as I go along.

Hibiscus shrubs are popular locally, but I haven't seen this species (Hibiscus schizopetalus) in any garden but my own.
Is it familiar in other parts of the world?

I've never seen anything like it!

hmmm explosives .. could have been interesting

That is so lovely Auntie. I looked it up and apparently it is
native to tropical eastern Africa in Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique.We have hibiscus here in abundance, almost a weed, but not that one.

Anyone reading my blog will know my quest for a pre-1963 graphic warning sign like the one just off my road till about 2005 which I forgot to take a photo of. I've been collecting every other example of the old signs for 2 1/2 years and the only red triangle warning signs I'd got were a graphic one missing a corner and a text one until this weekend when I finally found a perfect example using Streetview. The black paint has worn off making the pictures look red while all the red paint has worn off the triangle, but with a coat of paint it would be like new.

Are you ever tempted to take the signs, SatG?? I can just see you with a screwdriver shinnying up the pole ..


Another shot from the road trip

Good day! My first visit over this side of Funtrivia.I like all your pictures. Here is one of mine.
One of this year's hybrid Mallards in our park.

Welcome kidder, good to see a new arrival here. Jill, us purists only really appreciate signs in situ, like my train tickets (I think you remember that!) which only count if you go and get them yourself from the stations rather than somewhere else, which go in a different set. In fact if you ask nicely councils usually give the old signs they remove to the first person who asks them, they have no use for them and was offered one large direction sign recently I had no room for, and only remembered later I knew someone online who did collect them and puts them on his garden wall. I did buy one small one like mine though just for a record and may put it up somewhere outdoors although will probably last a few days round here before it's been liberated.

Here's a very nice new house just gone up in Hampstead- this is really a 1970s design and very unusual to see nowadays

Kidder welcome! That duck photo is just gorgeous!

Love the duck too! Welcome Kidder

I like that house but I do wonder about houses with flat rooves .. where does the rain go .. or snow in London for that matter .. and isn't there some insulation benefits from having a peak?

Rooves .. hmmm. Why does that seem odd when I read it back? Another one like 'gaol'!

Thanks for the pelican post, Jake! Theit bodies almost look in reverse to our .. ours with the black body and white tips on the wings. We have a lake nearby which I'm hoping will have lots on it when other flood waters receed.

This is Diesel, my neice's dog.

If anyone knows the song The old Bull and Bush here it is in Hampstead, taken for an online friend who moved to Australia in 1974 and hasn't seen it since.

Pero's bridge in Bristol. Named after an 18th century slave, the bridge is known locally as the 'horned bridge' because of the two horn-like structures which act as counter-balances when the middle section (right of picture) is raised to allow ships through.