Wolves Wild

Autumn’s the time of the fungi flush, the peak season for fungi to send out their fruiting bodies, especially mushrooms. Although the long hot dry summer has been replaced by damper weather, the season so far has been disappointing. So I’ve gathered some fungi pictures from the same month in previous years which I never got round to posting online at the time.

To start, that favourite of children’s book illustrators, a fly agaric, with its characteristic red cap speckled with white warts.

The distinctive mushrooms almost always grow in association with birch trees, often re-appearing in the same spot for year after year. This was an exception. Two small patches appeared in West Park in September 2013, with no signs of any subsequent return.

A young heron on the alert, standing at the edge of the canal as it passed the edge of Dunstall Park, seen several years ago.

Common darters, one of the more easily spotted dragonflies. Frequently found near water resting on vegetation or other flattish surfaces, wings outspread.

I haven’t been having my usual occasional visits to West Park this summer. The tsunami of heatwaves meant that staying indoors in the cool was advisable for someone of my age and various medical conditions. When the long dry spell gave way to a series of torrential downpours, the conditions were still less than inviting for having gentle strolls in the fresh air.

A visit in May, before the great heat, showed one pair of swans resident on the lake. They seemed to be having difficulties controlling the fast and erratic movements of three tiny bundles of fluff, cygnets looking like they were very recently hatched. Perhaps they were keen to explore their new surroundings. They were zooming to put as much space as they could between themselves, their siblings and their parents.

Our next visit was in late August, with the cormorants, herons and tufted ducks. The cygnet numbers had now fallen to two (I had been expecting more losses). The two were approaching the size of their mother, with their juvenile down beginning to give way to white feathers.

But they were still keeping their distance from each other.

Two of the handful of tufted ducks which stay resident on West Park lake over the summer – the numbers usually swell, perhaps to around twenty or thirty, over the winter.

Somewhat closer views of the recent cormorants in West Park. Cormorants aren’t regular fixtures on the lake. They tend to show up perhaps two or three times a decade, rest and have a good feed for a few days or a few weeks, then move on. This group is bigger than usual, and also broke the regular pattern by arriving as summer is giving way to autumn.