Category: David

The tassles, male catkins, of a garrya elliptica or silk tassle plant hanging down from the bush.

Lots of fungi have fruiting bodies (the bits which we can normally see) which only last briefly at the best of times. Most of these are sensitive to cold, and aren’t seen after frosty weather.

Over then next few days, I’ll be posting pictures of fungi I’ve noticed this month, which have survived several freezings and re-thawings. Here a clump of velvet shanks on a tree stump. The stump was on raised ground, right at my eye level.

Seed-heads from some of the bulrushes (reedmace) on the Compton Park wetland area, at the ends of stem so battered by the weather they had bent from the vertical to an almost horizontal position.

The seed-heads had accumulated a coating of green algae, encouraged by the damp winter. On the morning these pictures were taken, the algal layer was further embellished with a sprinkling of frost.

West Park heron, its feet just covered in water by the shoreline of the lake, seeming to be staring into space. I couldn’t spot anything in its line of sight which might be potential prey or a possible threat.

Yellow brain fungus grows on trees or on fallen branches. It’s colour can vary from pale yellow to the bright orange shown here. Whei I’ve seen it isn the past, it’s been in the form of small blobs, slightly gooey looking. These, on the branch of an oak, looked like a convoluted mass the size of, well, a peeled citrus fruit.

Black-headed gull on a post at the edge of the upper pool at Perton. The feathers on its head were just beginning to turn dark: In good light the colour shows as dark brown, not black. It’s possibly this bird’s first spring as an adult, and if so, the first time for the feathers to darken.