Centaurea montana, cornflower (what I call them) bachelor's button as I first heard recently on this site, or mountain bluet.
Listen to bird song said the calendar tip for today. I never need much prompting to pay attention to birds but in the spirit of wild, I stopped to pay special attention to the song around me as I cycled through the park.
Magpies, blackbirds, tits, and something unusual that I couldn't recognise. In the streets, I primarily heard something that virtually disappeared from London but has gradually been making a comeback thank goodness - the loud, chattery cheeping of sparrows.
Sparrows were once typical London birds (cockney sparrer an' all that) and as common and fearless as pigeons. Then really suddenly, in my lifetime, they just literally disappeared and no one really knows why. Pollution is a suspected culprit.
Anyway in the last few years, there's been a definite increase and there are colonies all around the local streets. They're not quite the same cheeky almost tame birds that once proliferated, more like other wild birds. But that's not a bad thing and I'm so happy to see them again in such numbers.
Still playing?