Author: David

Growing on a lawn, and just sticking up higher than the grass, some wrinkled club fungi. They appear in the same area every autumn.

Female house sparrows feeding on a fatball feeder on a freezing cold day. This was my first try at filming and editing in portrait format using a mobile phone.

I thought I’d left my setup well away from the birds’ perches and flight paths, but events proved me wrong. Usually, the feeder attracts a few titmice, an occasional dunnock, but mostly a mob of sparrows jostling for access. The brief bursts of activity recorded here were the only events in a half hour which was much quieter than normal.

A tufted duck male heading towards the middle of the West Park lake earlier this month.

It was then one of the few tufties on the lake. Number have now started to rise as more birds joint the flock to use the park as a refuge over the winter.

After heavy overnight rain, the deliquescing caps of these shaggy inkcaps were glistening in the morning sunlight.

Another of my occasional experiments trying to teach myself to use video editing software. This one is a slideshow putting together some stills of magpie inkcap mushrooms, with a soundtrack of soothing music.

The individual pictures of these distinctive black and white fungi have all previously appeared in old posts on this site – some date back as long ago as 2013. They were growing at various sites in the west midlands.

Redlead roundhead mushrooms are bright red and, when damp as here, a cap which is slightly glutinous. The vivid colour, shape and  glutinousness are hints that they may be related to the verdigris species featured a couple of days ago. It is indeed in the same genus.

Verdigris mushrooms are northern hemisphere fungi: from Europe, parts of Asia and of north America. Redlead roundheads originate in Australia. They were first recorded in Britain in the last century, almost certainly arriving on imported timber. Now quite common, but still most often found growing on wood chip mulch.