Category: David

Sunlight catches one leaf of a Japanese acer by Bantock House when the rest of the tree was in shadow.

The patch of trees seen across the Pitch and Putt course show a more restrained palette of early autumn leaf colours.

At this time of year, the morning flights of skeins of Canada geese from West Park get bigger and noisier. The birds set off as if on their long ancestral autumn migration from Canada to Mexico, before they remember how cushy their life is on the boating lake.

A few of these birds are smaller and paler than the others. They are crosses: one parent was a Canada, the other most likely a domesticated goose. The lead bird in the main picture is a greylag!

Abbreviated seed-cases on a bullrush, showing the velvet texture of the brown covering of the structure.

Candlesnuff fungus (also know as stagshorn fungus) grows as groups of fruiting bodies, up to a couple of inches tall, on dead hardwood – sometimes it seems to be growing directly out of the ground, a sign that there is burried wood present.

It looks a bit like the wicks of unlit, part-used candles, and, on closer examination, branches in a way vaguely reminiscent of antlers.

It is common. While it can be found at any time of year, it is most visible in the autumn and winter.

Carrion crow perching on a twing of a tree directly overlooking the water bridge, so unconcerned it almost looked like it was posing to have its picture taken.

Common darter dragonfly in one of their favoured positions on the handrail of the footbridge across the pool in Compton Park. I was able to get close enough for a picture showing the complex patterning of the veins in the insects’s wings.