Birds and bees plant

DAY 186 (8 OCTOBER) – Late cotoneaster (Cotoneaster coriaceus) (Farnham)

Ah … another autumn arrangement thrown together and just asking to be photographed.

These berries are loved by blackbirds and thrushes, so that’s good. Even better, the flowers that appear in early summer provide bees with much-needed nectar during the ‘June gap’. I had never heard of this, but it’s the period between the abundance of spring pollen and the return of nectar in herbaceous borders later in the summer.