Wolves Wild

A thing that never happens has happened again: a West Park tufted duck, out of the water. It’s a different tuftie this time, a female, but she’s resting on the same fallen bough.

These deceivers were just starting to emerge, peeping through the short grass. Even when full grown, they look similar to several other small brownish mushrooms, hence their name.

More pictures of fly agaric mushrooms from Bantock Park. It’s easy to see why this species is a favourite of illustrators.

A spider climbing up a long single thread of silk. I think it’s a common garden spider, a female. It was rather smaller than I’d expect of this species at this time of year. The pattern on the back of its abdomen looked right for the species: they are also sometimes called cross spiders. The huge abdomen in proportion to the rest of the body is likely because it is swollen with eggs.

A heron has been perched in the same willow on the West Park lake island for several days recently. This time, I visited the park in the early afternoon. The heron was there once again, this time asleep, or giving a veryu good impression of sleeping.

Not a fungus which immediately leaps to the eye. White spindle looks like short stalks, sometimes gnarly or bifurcating. It’s usually just about visible peeking out between the leaves of short grass, and it’s another one I’m noticing more of this year.

These were growing on different lawns at waist level, so I didn’t need to lie down to get these pictures.

A comma butterfly, one of the autumn generation, resting in the sun on a bramble leaf. It was warming up before heading off to feed on the ivy flowers nearby,

A groups of boletes, possibly suede boletes, growing in short grass under trees by the side of Clark Road.

A horse chestnut in West Park. I didn’t get up close enough to see if the leaf colour had changed for autumn, or whether it was the blight which nowadays turns these leaves brown in late summer.

What attracted me was less the tree, than its contrast with the strips worn by the teams playing football. Even before I got to that part of the park, the match was making its presence felt. There were a few spectators, and I’ve never come across a more enthusiastic group at a weekend football in the park match before.

The blusher is another mushroom species which seems to be popping up all over the place this autumn. Their size, shape and warty caps immediately mark them as an allied species to fly agarics. They don’t have such a distinctive colour, but their size still makes them quite easy to spot.

These are from several different locations: lawns in front gardens, by roadsides, Bantock Park.