Category: David

A lone fly agaric mushroom in Bantock Park, possibly the last one which is likely to emerge this year. A wedge had somehow been removed from the cap, reminding me of a pizza from which one slice had been taken.

Two herons on the same island on West Park lake. Both were on the same side of the island, getting the full benefit of the morning sun.

The bird in the willow tree had already been in a similar spot a few times in the previous weeks, but I hadn’t seen the one on the ground before.

Ripe sloes on a blackthorn bush, which also had a healthy growth of lichens along the branches.

A white bracket fungus growing prolifically on a fallen tree in a wooded area of the Stratford on Avon Recreation Ground.

Medlars, high on the tree in the public gardens by the parish church in Stratford on Avon. All the lower fruit had fallen, and were bletting on the ground.

Bletting, and the Shakespeare connections of medlars, are explained here.

Cramp balls – presumably they were thought to cure the condition, not cause it – are sometimes also called the coal fungus, of King Alfred’s cakes. They are quite common, as the variant names hints. Whatever their medicinal properties, the dried fungi were used as tinder when starting fires by rubbing sticks or bashing stones together.