Category: David

Delicate pink mushrooms – rosy bonnets (Mycena rosea) – growing in Himley Plantation, just yards from the spookier forms of some dead man’s fingers.

Back in the summer, this fallen bough in West Park lake was the favourite posing place of the resident turtle. It’s somewhere deep in the mud, having its long winter sleep. The bough now left for the gulls to squabble over the limited standing room.

Magpie, cautious as it climbs down the wall for a drink of water from the West Park lake.

Fly agarics, bright red caps, but the white flecks of the “warts” over the caps all washed way by bouts of heavy rain. The so-called warts are the remnants of a veil which protected the caps as they pushed their way through the soil.

Blue roundhead (Stropharia caerulea) mushrooms. These are from the same small grouping, growing in long grass on tow different days. On one of the days, the lighting conditions gave the blue tinge to the fungi a more marked effect.

Leaves on a young oak by the canal near Compton. The leaves, browning from the tip, are not just turning an autumn colour.

When I looked at the underside of the leaves, they were more or less densely covered in spangle galls. The browning of the upper surfaces have patches of darker brown, located directly over the galls below.