Author: David

Yellow spindle coral fungus grows as bunches of yellow fingers, less than a centimetre high.

Despite its strong colour, it is sometimes hard to spot, even in short grass.

Spider’s web using the top of an umbellifer as the scaffolding. The tiny drops of water from the early morning dew help to make the strands of the web stand out.

Glistening inkcaps are small mushrooms which grow in troops on underground rotting wood, such as the roots of former trees.

The centres of the caps of freshly emerged ones have a rich tan colour, fading towards grey at the rim of the cap. As the mushrooms age, the cap centres shift colour progressively to approach the tone of the rim.

A lasting patch may have clumps of mushrooms of different ages.

These were growing in a spot by a footpath where there are fresh eruptions of glsitening inkcaps several times a year.

Earthworm hurrying along a canal towpath.

The orangish section, roughly one third of the body length behind the head, is the clitellum. It holds the worm’s eggs. This worm may have been in such a hurry to find a good spot for its eggs.

A bee gathering pollen from ivy flowers has got a heavy dusting of the pollen on its legs and body.

Towards the end of October, a belated fungi flush finally got underway. There were some common and familiar species, and other species which I don’t remember having seen before.

This is a species I failed to identify. As so often with this year’s pictures, it was taken on a morning after overnight rain.

Being half-hidden in grass hadn’t protected these fly agaric mushrooms from being eaten.

This dragonfly landed on the parapet of the bridge which carries Castlecroft Road over the Smestow Valley Railway walk just as I was taking the pictures which featured in the previous post.

It didn’t seem at all worried as I turned my camera in its direction and took a series of pictures.

Distorted acorns produced when a tiny wasp lays her egg in them.

Growing on one of the oak trees by the Smestow Valley Railway Walk, right by Castlecroft Road. The view from the bridge put me on the level with the acorns.

According to sources elsewhere on the web, there are occasional years where these galls are very common. I don’t remember ever having seen them before. As far as I could see, every acorn on that oak was affected. I’ve been looking round at other local oak trees since, any not seen any more of these galls – though I haven’t seen many normal-looking acorns either.

Some of the trees right by Bantock House as they began to change colour recently, spotted on the same day as the trees in the picture posted yesterday.

Waxcaps are small, often brightly coloured mushrooms. The blackening waxcap is yellow at first, and gradually turns completely black.

The change in colour has only just begun in the first mushroom – at the peak of the cap and where a section of the rim has been nibbled. The other, pictured at the same time, is already somewhat darker.

Sulfur tufts are distinctive all-yellow mushrooms which grow, usually in clumps, on wood which is rotting underground: normally the roots of former trees.

All the mushrooms shown here are still young. They probably only grew in the night before the pictures were taken.