The first stage of development of the cones of an ornamental conifer.
Author: David
A visit to East Park
Work will soon begin renovating East Park, thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund grant. The striking clock tower in the distance above will once again be getting a clock.
The bandstand is currently in a sad state of disrepair.
Blooms on an impressive camellia bush by the lodge at the entrance.
The avenue of mature plane trees forms a tunnel even when their leaves are gone. This view looks back towards the lodge, which is pictured below.
And finally: to disprove my recent posts which have been talking about Danish scurvy grass as a plant which is spreading only in thin strips along busy roads, there was a patch several yards across in East Park.
Bee on a leaf
Danish scurvy grass revisited
Violets on a bank
Web along a twig
Lesser celandines coming out
Lock gate workshop Open Day
Not actually wildlife, but the work which goes on to maintain the places we use where wildlife also thrives, here the canals.
All the lock gates on the British Waterways system are built at a workshop at the end of the Bradley arm of the Birmingham canal, which now leads only to that workshop, though it was on the original, Brindley, main line.
The workshop had an open day recently. These pictures were taken then.
Birch tree in a mist
More pond life
Pollen-laden pussy willow catkins
Troop of glistening inkcaps
Inkcaps are a set of mushroom species which shed their spores by deliquescing – it appears their caps are disintegrating into a black, sometimes gooey, mess. Different sections of these clumps of glistening inkcaps were showing different stages along that process. The most recent fungi in the foreground above, though towards almost complete disintegration to the left of the third picture.