Author: David

Not something I notice very often: a pair of insects mating.

These were hoverflies, specifically sun flies, on a hawthorn leaf in the sun.

Inkcaps are a group of mushroom species which shed their spores not through gills or pores, but by their caps deliquescing – disintegrating, as was well under way here.

Two minute snails near the top of what appeared to be a long, thin cactus by the entrance to Donington church, hard by Albrighton. The lych-gate can be seen, out of focus, in the background.

Russulas growing in the vegetation patch by the ring road as it passes through a cutting between the bus and railway stations.

Russulas are a genus of mushrooms which often have strongly coloured caps. Several species are pinkish, and I couldn’t get close enough to these to try to identify which they were.

I don’t know whether the yellowing/browning is changing colour for the autumn or a viral infection, but it affects many dock leaves at this time of year.

Elderberries seem to be another fruit heading for a good crop this year. The bunch at the end of this were up out of the reach of any would-be country wine maker.

Shaggy parasols in West Park, a day after the previous pictures.

They’ve now spread out and taken up the parasol shape.

Slime mould closely following the form of the bark it was growing on. It was on one of the logs left to recycle naturally on the ground in Himley Plantation.

Brown birch boletes are one of the mushrooms which seem to have been popping up all over the place this autumnal fungi season.

These were on the patch of grass outside the car showroom on the Penn Road by the ring road roundabout.

Bryony is a climber, clinging to hedgerow bushes. At this time of year, the ripening berries are going from green, through yellow to ever darker shades of red.

Plums and custard mushrooms, otherwise known as red-haired agarics, growing on a hard of access log (part of a one-time conifer trunk) in the wood at Wightwick Manor.

The name comes from the colour of the cap and the gills/flesh. They are probably not edible.

Half-open water lily bud half trapped under the plant’s leaves in the pond at Wightwick Manor.