David

Medlars, high on the tree in the public gardens by the parish church in Stratford on Avon. All the lower fruit had fallen, and were bletting on the ground.

Bletting, and the Shakespeare connections of medlars, are explained here.

Cramp balls – presumably they were thought to cure the condition, not cause it – are sometimes also called the coal fungus, of King Alfred’s cakes. They are quite common, as the variant names hints. Whatever their medicinal properties, the dried fungi were used as tinder when starting fires by rubbing sticks or bashing stones together.

A squirrel in the riverside gardens by the chain ferry in Stratford on Avon, looking really determined that nothing was going to part it from the chestnut it was carrying.

The Stratford upon Avon Local Nature Reserve again – actually the car park at the town centre end of the reserve. The car park has some old and gnarled willows on its margin. Growing on one of the willows, climbing up the trunk and the boughs, were these mushrooms, Although they rare distinctive, I’m not sure what species they are.

A row of liquidambar planted on the approaches to the theatre in Stratford on Avon make their most dramatic show in early November. They had lost quite a lot more of their leaves the day after these pictures were taken.

Honey fungus growing ay and near the base of a willow tree. In a few years, the tree will need to be felled before it crashes down in a winter gale: the fungus is eating it from within.

These yellow fieldcaps were growing under a huge spreading willow tree, a little further along the footpath from the mushrooms in the previous couple of days’ posts.

Pigeons cover the roof of a building by the Tramway Bridge across the river in Stratford on Avon, with gulls lining up on the ridge of the roof behind. They’re all in position to spot the moment that anyone on the riverbank scatters seed on the ground to feed the birds.

A white wagtail dashing round, hunting after insects. Bancroft Gardens by the river in Stratford on Avon is evidently good hunting grounds for wagtails. There’s often one or a pair hunting there. It’s also one of the two places with the majority of tourists wandering round: the other is by Shakespeare’s birthplace, also a wagtail hotspot.

These must both be such good hunting spots that the birds don’t fly off unless someone gets really close. So it’s possible to get near enough to picture them.

Sulfur tuft fungi, which were growing on the same pile of wood chip mulch as the hare’s foot inkcaps (previous post). A very common mushroom of the autumn ant through to the winter, usually growing on tree stumps.