Category: David

Watercress growing in a stream, still flowering last month.

Tiny snail, perhaps a quarter-inch long, crawling on the side of a plastic garden table. It was one of three, but by the time I’d got my camera the only way I could have pictured the other two would have been to become a contortionist very quickly.

The delicate strands of a couple of cobwebs covered in tiny drops of water from morning dew.

Another clump of toughshank toadstools, this time growing at the edge of the Railway Walk.

They could be the same species as in the previous post, but they showed no signs of developing the age spots in the week before someone stomped on them. So they were perhaps clustered toughshank.

Spotted toughshanks are mushrooms which grow in clumps under trees, predominantly but not exclusively conifers. They start off white, but as they age spots develop on the caps. The spots have been compared to freckles, and to the sprinkling of chocolate on a cappucino.

The ones pictured here were just beginning to develop this pattern.

Moth resting on the wooden handrail of the footbridge over the pool at Compton Park. It is coloured in the same range of greys as the wood, not that that helps for camouflage.