David

This side arm comes off the Birmingham canal just by Bilston Road.

Smaller, but otherwise similar to pigeon footprints. Wood pigeon prints are larger again. The prints are most reliably distinguished by seeing which bird actually made them!

These lichen were growing on the same bough of a small oak tree by the pond at Boscobel House recently.

Velvet shanks are one of the few winter fungi. The fruiting bodies can survive freezing and then still product spores.

This clump was growing on a stump, the normal habitat for this mushroom.

Former warehouses backing onto the Birmingham canal near Horseley Fields. Pictured within minutes of each other. The one building was by an unfrozen stretch of the canal; the other, just around a corner, by a stretch where the ice cover was still all but complete.

Footprints left by a grey squirrel in a thin layer of snow. More on the bird prints which are also there in a couple of days.

Another grab shot with a hand-held camera.

Fox footprints in snow several inches deep.

A grab shot with a hand-held camera on a dismal day.