Category: David

Ivy, one of the few plants still flowering into the autumn, attracts a lot of insects. This comma butterfly was on a bush which also had red admirals and a lot of bees.

Early morning dew still remaining as fine drops on bullrush leaves. The smallest droplets show traces of one or another colour of the rainbow.

Lawyers wig (shaggy inkcap) when about half the cap had disappeared once the spores had been released. The same mushroom was previously pictured when it had just about grown to its full height.

Shovellers: ducks with beaks which widen to a spoon shape as they get to then end. They use them to plough through the water, dabbling for food just below the surface.

This pair have been on the West Park lake recently. The male was still in eclipse plumage, and not easy to distinguish from the female.

As the name implies, common darter are among the most frequently seen dragonflies, around from late summer well into the autumn.

They also have a habit, helpful for identification and photography, of resting on a horizontal surface and staying put if they are approached carefully.

This one perched on nettles growing at the edge of the canal at Castlecroft.

Milk caps are a group fo mushrooms which exude a watery fluid, often white in colour, when cut or broken. Fresh false saffron milk caps look like the commoner saffron milk cap, to the extent that they were thought to be a mere sub-species until less than fifty years ago.

The pale blue discolouration is not mould. It’s a normal colour change in aging false saffron milk caps.