Category: David

A normally dry ditch in a small wood, converted into a pool by the recent rains.

A sage plant with its leaves covered in frost on a cold clear morning at the end of last month.

Scarlet elf cups are small but striking fungi, bright red on one surface, and paler and sometimes cream-coloured on the other. They grow on dead wood.

Last winter, I noticed several patches at different spots in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve, so I’ve been going back fairly regularly to look if they have come back. These are the first I’ve spotted, on a pile of twigs by the Ranger Station at Newbridge.

Perhaps because of the conditions, or perhaps because they had just come out, these were smaller than normal. The “cups” were somewhere between a quarter and half an inch across: it’s normally between one and two inches. Here are pictures of some of the elf cups on the same wood pile last February.

The agricultural land of Solihull includes a lot of small woods. The footpath between Berkswell and Hampton in Arden crosses several, including running along one edge of Sixteen Acre wood.

The trees are tall conifers, spaced with a regularity which can only come from planting. The recent gales had brought one of the trees down by the path.

Frost encrusting the remains of a sea holly.

I couldn’t decide whether I preferred the picture in landscape format, or the one in portrait format.

The greylag geese from the last post: they had been heading for one of the pools left by the persistent heavy rains. As far as I could see, they were drinking the water.