Category: David

Upper Furnace Pool, the highest of a series of pools created by dams on the brook flowing down the valley at Coalbrookdale. Built to provide a reliable source of water for the historic Abraham Darby ironworks, now a haven for wildlife.

Just about every above-ground part of the stickweed clings, earning it, among its more polite names, the epithet of velcro plant. At this time of year the small fruit stick to any clothing brought too close to the plant, and presumably also to the fur of any mammal passing through a patch.

Soldier beetles and other small green insects feeding on the same thistle flowers – attractive to many different species.

Destroying angel mushrooms – as nasty as the name implies. A fungus which had a central role in a 2001 episode of Midsomer Murders, which included a reasonably accurately portrayal of the symptoms of destroying angel poisoning.

Not a fungus I have often seen around the west midlands, it may have been brought in with the wood mulch.

CORRECTION: identified by Lukas Large as rose-gilled grisettes

The deep purple flowers of purple loosestrife at water’s edge, standing out here despite being dwarfed by bullrush leaves.

The same young great crested grebe featured in the previous post. When I passed the same way a couple of days later, the bird was swimming right past the narrowboat moored by the Ceeders Social Club. As it went by, its wake created swirls in the reflections of the bright paintwork of the boat.