Well into February, so its time to be on the look out for frog spawn like this. It’s probably not worth making a special excursion to where these pictures were taken a few years ago. The pond in Turner’s Field has recently been very disturbed, and may well have lost its attractions as a breeding spot for amphibians.
Female tufted duck, with a less eye-catching plumage than a male, swimming by on West Park lake.
Patterns: bubbles trapped under the ice of the then frozen West Park lake. The bubbles seemed only to be forming along one small stretch of the shoreline.
Goldfinches spending a long time eating seed, with briefer visits from green finches, bluetits and great tits.
Frost crystals forming on a branch of a rose bush during the recent cold spell.
The pond at the top end of Turner’s Field in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve recently. The water level lowered, and all the willows around and in the pond felled, reduced to logs or wood chips. For comparison, this is what the pond looked like from roughly the same spot back in February 2014.
Presumably related to the work to develop housing on the nearby site, formerly the location of the local authority plant nursery. Apart from the destruction of a fine set of mature trees, the pond has been reported in the past, IIRC, as a location where newts spawn.