Shovellers: ducks with beaks which widen to a spoon shape as they get to then end. They use them to plough through the water, dabbling for food just below the surface.
This pair have been on the West Park lake recently. The male was still in eclipse plumage, and not easy to distinguish from the female.
As the name implies, common darter are among the most frequently seen dragonflies, around from late summer well into the autumn.
They also have a habit, helpful for identification and photography, of resting on a horizontal surface and staying put if they are approached carefully.
This one perched on nettles growing at the edge of the canal at Castlecroft.
Milk caps are a group fo mushrooms which exude a watery fluid, often white in colour, when cut or broken. Fresh false saffron milk caps look like the commoner saffron milk cap, to the extent that they were thought to be a mere sub-species until less than fifty years ago.
The pale blue discolouration is not mould. It’s a normal colour change in aging false saffron milk caps.
The red stems of these elderberries match the colour of the unripe fruit, which darken to black as they become ready to eat.
A spider species often seen resting in the centre of large webs in the autumn, with a variety of vernacular names. Variously the European garden spider, diadem spider, crowned orb weaver, or cross spider. This close-up shows the origin of the last one on that list.
The ones on the webs are females.
The evergreen leaves of yews set off the lucious red of the berries – technically they are not berries, though they are usually called that. The dark bit visible in the middle is a cone, modified to hold just a single seed. The red outer is an aril. Like the flesh of a berry, its purpose is to get birds to eat it.
Look out for yews in churchyards, especially round old churches.
