Category: David

The early morning mist was very dense: the tree was perhaps twenty yards away, with the canal directly behind it.

All images from the same small pond featured on Tuesday.

A water snail between two recently hatched tadpoles.

Water snails

More water snails, feeding on the build-up on the pond lining.

Snails feeding on frogspawn or the nearby vegetation.

Tadpoles, spawn and snails.

The pollen only appears on male trees. Once it appears the flowers have gone beyond the bud stage which looks a little like fur and gives the tree its name.

Inkcaps are a set of mushroom species which shed their spores by deliquescing – it appears their caps are disintegrating into a black, sometimes gooey, mess. Different sections of these clumps of glistening inkcaps were showing different stages along that process. The most recent fungi in the foreground above, though towards almost complete disintegration to the left of the third picture.

A plant which in recent years has become visible as a white ribbon directly next to roads, usually busy ones. Danish scurvy grass is a plant which can tolerate high levels of salt in the soil where it grows (a halophile).

Winter gritting leaves such salt levels in the edge of verges. It is possible that the seeds also spread in car tyres. So this tiny flower is now becoming common in early spring, often found in a band only a few inches wide.

Most of the patches I’ve seen have been right by very busy A-roads – not comfortable places to stop to photograph. These were on the edge of the small village green at Seisdon.

It was a dull and chilly day when I was there, so the flowers are only half out.

OK, probably not the very first one, even locally. But the first bluebells were coming out in ones and twos a couple of days ago in the unexpectedly warm weather. This one was in the woods behind Northycote Farm.

I’d just crossed over into south Staffordshire when I heard the sound of the sound of the Goodyear balloon, heading to fly straight overhead..  The skyline is in the vicinity of Lower Penn.

Seen in a pool on one of the Wolverhampton allotments over the weekend. The frogspawn is already so well developed that the beginnings of the tadpole shape can be seen.

Perhaps the water snails are enjoying a glut of food.

Thanks to Barbara and Tony.

The buds of this year’s leaves can also be made out on the out of focus twigs.

A view of the lock on the Staffs & Worcs canal, early on a recent, misty morning.