Category: David

The inconspicuous flowers of some of the yew trees in West Park.

Sheep at Northycote Farm. The weather was miserable the day I visited, and I thought the sheep had suitably sheepish expressions.

For the past several winters there have been scarlet elf cup fungi on a pile of fallen twigs by the former Tettenhall Station by the Railway Walk at Newbridge. The numbers of fruiting bodies have been falling each year, perhaps because there is less and less to feed on in the wood substrate. But they are still there.

This year there is also a fresh patch of the fruiting bodies, a short distance further along the footpath. Maybe these grew from spores spread by the earlier ones.

On several recent visits to West Park, I’ve noticed a swan on the same patch of the shore of West Park’s boating lake island, always industriously preening. Usually there is another swan offshore, patrolling the area.

Possibly they are the swan pair which had been mating in the water nearby earlier, now getting ready to occupy the patch for their nest.

Two or even three other pairs of mature swans are acting as if they are staking claims at other points near the edge of this or the other island as nesting spots. The park might just be getting a bumper crop of cygnets for 2017.

Very active little grebe diving as it hunted for fish. This one was swimming in the canal in the shadow of the Wildside Centre.

Among the devastation caused by last month’s Storm Doris was more trees brought down than by normal winter gales. Here the remains of an oak tree in West Park, pulled up near the top of its roots. Not far away, just outside the park, a large old poplar had failed at something over head height, the thick trunk snapped like a matchstick.