Category: David

A large shape appears moving over the boating lake in West Park.

It’s a cygnet flying round, then spreading its wings, tail and legs to brake.

Then it lands on the water, before swimming to join the rest of the swans and cygnets on the pool.

Lichens are wonderful composite organisms: communities of a fungus giving the lichen its structure, and an alga or cyanobacterium, photsynthesising its energy supply.

Lichen colours are often subtle, and the varied shapes best seen by looking closely (a magnifying glass often helps).

This crinkly lichen was growing on the trunks of several roadside trees on Compton Hill.

Shovellers feed by swimming along, sieving the surface of the water with their beaks.

Sometimes they turn around, swimming on the spot and rotating surprisingly quickly. This was a pair on West Park lake doing precisely that.

When I first noticed them, I thought these puffballs were oak apples which had fallen on the ground. They were about the same size and colour.

Recently emerged fly agaric mushroom, but already nibbled by something, and washed by heavy rain. Some of the red pigment has washed out of the cap. That has left a yellowish colour on the rim of the cap, and also stained the remnants of the veil, just visible half way up the stem.

Fruit of a spindle tree, now fully opened. See this earlier post for how things looked as the fruit had just started to open.