Category: David

Apples, growing in the orchards of properties with Shakespearean associations, Mary Arden’s Farm, Wilmcote and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, Shottery.

Birch polypore, a common bracket fungus on birch trees, seen from above growing on a falling trunk, and from below on a still upright tree nearby.

Deep cutting in the sandstone rock, on the South Staffordshire Railway Walk between Wombourne and Himley Plantation.

The last flowers somewhat bedraggled, outnumbered by a mass of ripening seed heads on their stalks, on a roadside poppy.

Sleeping ferrets, from Mary Arden’s Farm, Wilmcote, one in a hammock, more in a crate.

I first noticed the sandy stiltballs in 2011, growing under the hedgerow on the sandy bank at the side of a narrow but busy country lane in south Shropshire. I learned that these distinctive fungi were rare – the ones I had spotted were a couple of miles as the crow flies from the single other known site were they were found in the count.

The next few years, up to 2014, I went back each late summer, and saw them again. Since 2015, I’ve not seen any sign of them. At first, I hoped this was because they were hidden in the increasingly luxuriant undergrowth under the hedge, though the credibility of this hope went down with each annual revisit.

I recently went back once again, this time arriving a few days after the work had been done to trim back the hedge and its undergrowth. No sign whatsoever of the stiltballs. These are pictures I never got round to posting from 2012.