Category: David

This male blackbird was in bushes not far from the Smestow Valley Reserve Ranger Station. It was a freezing-cold morning, and the bird seemed to want to carry on standing where it was, catching the sun.

This little grebe may have been one of this year’s chicks.

It was on the canal near Compton.

Here it is coming back up from a dive, shaking its head: perhaps to kill the small fish in its beak before it eats.

It was a calm day, so most of the pictures had the bird’s reflection in water which was rippled by its own movement.

It slipped back into the overhanging vegetation.

A pair of horse mushrooms which were growing on the grassy bank by the towpath near Compton a few weeks ago.

Because they were growing quite high up the bank, it was easy to get pictures showing the caps from below as well as above.

As the name implies, these mushrooms normally have a cap which is smoothly rounded. This clump were growing in the leaf litter at the edge of the Smestow Valley Railway Walk.

Tiny fungus,less than half a centimetre across, growing in the moss on the top of a wall.

Doesn’t actually have an English name, presumably because it is so small that it usually escapes notice. Leptoglossum retirugum is its official Linnean name: milk-white little cup is a translation of its name in German, Milchweisser Becherling.

Fly agaric mushroom pictured the morning after I’d first noticed it, here. The overnight frost was still on the leaf-litter.