David

Ivy starts to flower in October, when most other plants have given over blooming.

The flowers attract large numbers of feeding insects, especially on sunny autumn days.

The insects are so fixated on their tasks that they can be approached quite closely. It’s possible to get photos which show details such as the transparent wings and hairy legs and body of this bee.

The bee may have just set out for the day: there are only a couple of grains of pollen sticking to its body.

The spectacular red or ripening vibernum berries. I took this picture with a wide-angle lens almost touching the main subject, to produce an exaggerated perspective of the other berries and the reddening leaves on the rest of the bush.

These mushrooms were growing hiding under a bush not far from the Smestow Valley Ranger Station recently.

They don’t have an English name: indeed the only western European language which seems to have a name for them is German. That name translates as the grey and white carbolic mushroom.

A magpie busy feeding on the lawn outside the Customs and Excise office on Tettenhall Road, unconcerned at the people passing by.

It may be the same adult bird which had been feeding on the front lawn of one of the houses nearby pictured some weeks earlier, or possibly a now older chick which had been with the adult [picture].

A mixed flock of black headed and lesser black backed gulls which regularly rest up on the local playing fields.

A flock of jackdaws are increasingly prospecting the same area.

The boldest of the jackdaws were walking in the midst of the gulls.

A rose growing on the outside wall of the one-time lock keeper’s cottage at Wightwick Lock last weekend.

Leaves changing colour on a maple in a front garden in Castlecroft.

I couldn’t decide which picture I liked best.

Spiderswebs seem to become more noticeable in the autumn. This one was catching the sun just after dawn.

Oak roll rims are mushrooms which often (but not invariably) grow near to oak trees.

They have a dull brown cap, and yellower gills, stems and flesh. As they come up they have a domed cap, but as they grow older the rim rises above the centre.

Trees begin to develop their flowers early, some of them even before winter has set in.

A birch tree in the field behind Compton Lock was already showing catkins before the middle of October.