David

Crawling round on the layered cup fungi (previous post) was a tiny fly which I only noticed when I got home and saw the pictures on a larger screen. As this cropped version of one of the pictures shows, even then it came out somewhat pixelated. An ID by iNaturalist suggests it may be one of the Heleomyzid flies, also known as the spiny-winged flies. Some species of these flies are associated with fungi.

Layered cup Peziza varia is one of the so-called cup fungi. Many of them are roughly thimble shaped and roughly thimble sized. Layered cups are neither, if these were typical. They were a couple of inches across and mostly rather flattened.

The bank of the Smestow under the Bridgnorth Road bridge at Compton was a bank of lesser celandines in flower. Looking down from the bridge, this was the best view I could get.

Fairies bonnets, small mushrooms of the Coprinus genus, almost always appear in swarms. These had forced their way through the gap between the pavement and a garden wall.

A cloudless morning earlier this month, a damson tree with some flowers still in bud, and others fully open, seen white against the blue of the sky.

A tawny mining bee had got trapped on the wrong side of a window. After making several attempts to take what it thought was the direct route to where it wanted to go – through the glass – it was taking a rest. After a few seconds to take these shots, I helped it find what was actually the escape route it wanted.