David

Perton on a chilly misty morning. The resident muscovy drake by the inlet to the large pool, the spot where people come to feed the birds. It wasn’t the sort of weather where people were coming to get rid of their unused bread, so the duck was methodically preening its feathers.

Common jelly fungus can indeed be found often, and at any time of year. This was on the footbridge over the pool at Compton Park. Not a good sign for the long-term future of the bridge: the fungus lives on damp, decaying wood.

More tiny fungi just rising up through the short grass of a lawn. Earth tongues, black, velvety-looking and yes, perhaps, slightly resembling tongues. I’d have had to get a lot closer to try to work out which precise species they were. Growing intermingled with them were bonnets, a more conventional mushroom shape, delicate-looking on their slender stems.

The lawn they were on was in front of one of the houses in a quiet cul de sac.

Views across the two pools at Perton, one of the misty mornings last month.

Growing on the front lawn of a block of flats, conveniently at waist height, wrinkled club fungi rising as tall as the short grass. The final two pictures are of some growing in Old Nursery Wood, a lot more wrinkled.

The same misty, dewy morning as yesterday’s webbed dock pictures, an entire field of rough grass, each tussock covered in its web.