Wolves Wild

One group of mushrooms which peak during the autumn fungi flush, and sometimes carry on showing even when winter frosts arrive, are waxcaps.

Waxcaps are tiny mushrooms, usually a centimetre or two tall. But the different species come in a range of distinctive colours: yellows, reds, greens, or shades ranging from white to black. The colours are often bright in fresh specimens, but can fade, especially after rain.

Fresh snowy waxcaps are conical-capped and a bright white – traces of the this colour cans still be around the rim of this specimen. Here, the cap has not merely flattened, but turned inside out like an umbrella caught in a strong wind.

A blewit. From the remaining purple or lilac colour on the cap, possibly a wood blewit.

One of the oyster mushroom group of fungi species, which grow on tree trunks, or, as here, on stumps.

Monochrome versus full colour treatments comparison continued, this time with pictures of a couple of the cormorants on West Park lake.

An experiment to see how different the effect would be in a picture reduced to different shades of grey. The original version is below for comparison.

At tree-top level on the island in West Park lake, standing on the next tree to the one chosen by the heron, one cormorant perched separate from the rest of the flock. Was it perhaps keeping an eye on the heron?

Also high in trees on the island were ring-necked parakeets, calling but not actually showing themselves.