Category: David

Patch of soft mud near a badger sett. For some reason only the front of the animalsfeet marked the ground where they passed, leaving a series of clawprints.

View from bridge crossing stream flowing from Lower Wishing Pool looking towards Spring Pool, nearing the Himley end of Baggeridge Country Park.

A revisit to the pond where frogspawn had been seen earlier. There was an even greater mass of eggs in the quiet bay of the pool.

The week and a half separating the visits (March 20 – 31) had been cool, so the eggs only showed very slight signs that the tadpoles were beginning to develop – a few embryonic tails just beginning to appear.

UPDATE: a week after these pictures were taken the tadpoles hatched. At first they were all crowded together (pics coming soon). Now the frogspawn is all gone and the tiny tadpoles dispersed. Occasionally they can be seen darting from one hiding place in the vegetation at the bottom of the pond to another.

Ivy on a tree trunk, with bark which seems to be stained red by the lichen growing on it.

These bullrushes (reedmace) flowered last year. Their wind-bourne seeds have been dispersed in the last few weeks. They’ve probably been carried a long way with the weather we have been having.

Palomino cups, pale coloured and cup-shaped when small, flattening as they grow larger. Like many fungus species they grow on dead wood which might be buried underground.