Category: David

Moorhen swimming along on a canal. First it was in a patch of water reflecting the bright sky, so the camera rendered the bird in silhouette. As it moved, the next picture gave a clearer view of its colours.

Polyanthus in a front garden, flowering in the unusually mild winter as if spring had already arrived.

At least four different species of fungi were growing on a fallen tree trunk by the track at Northycote Farm recently.

The most noticable from a distance were the yellow crowds of small stagshorn, a common jelly fungus. A species of small zoned bracket fungi have also found their way into one of the pictures.

Ear fungus, a common type of jelly fungus. Can be found at any time of year, but most often in the autumn and winter, almost always (as here) growing on elder.

Views just outside Pattingham on a misty mid-December morning.

Electricity pylons fading into the distance; trees silhouetted on the skyline, and the rocket-like spire of the parish church.

Golden jelly fungus also goes by a series of other names: witch’s butter, yellow brain fungus, yellow trembler and the linnaean version, Tremella mesenterica.

This pair of fruiting bodies were growing on a twig almost overhanging the footpath across Compton Rough in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve.