Category: David

Dead man’s fingers, fungi with a ghoulish name, grow on dead wood – often, as here, on fallen tree trunks. Another of the wide variety of fungus species encouraged by the Woodland Trust management of the wood at Himley Plantation.

Another set of pictures which I somehow missed posting at the time they were taken. Fly agarics provide a bright note in the autumn, and are usually quite easy to find, often growing in close association with birch trees.

This year they have been very few and far between. So here are some I noticed on a visit to Bantock Park back in October 2014.

Group of mallards swimming in the Severn at Bridgnorth, which seemed to have arranged themselves into a circle. Several were preening on the spot despite the current being quite strong.

I’ve not been able to get out very much recently, so instead I’ve been looking back through images I never got around to posting at the time they were taken.

These are of a large red damselfly female, large but not at all red, resting in the sun on the decking of the footbridge on the pond at Compton Park.

The pictures were taken back in July 2014. The pond and surrounding wetland are now getting overgrown. This summer there were far less damselflies and dragonflies.

Taken the same day at the end of last month, on the same ivy plant. One clump of flowers still in bloom, if going over. On another twig, more favoured by the sun, the seeds were already beginning to ripen.

Fungus, possibly an oyster fungus, growing on a decaying fallen tree trunk in Himley Plantation.

Viewed from one direction the cap looked lilac, not quite as strongly to the naked eye as in these pictures. Seen from the other side it was grey.

From the state of them, they had been out for some days.