Wolves Wild

West Park squirrel which was coming down the trunk of a tree, in its mouth a peanut which it had got earlier.

Fly agaric mushrooms grow in association with trees, almost always birch trees. This one (and several others which had been kicked over) was growing under a Scots pine, with no birches nearby.

More pictures of shovellers feeding by filtering just below the surface of the water they are swimming in, while moving quite fast in thght circles..

These birds, too, are on the West Park lake. This time one male-female pair, and a nearby male-male pair.

A large shape appears moving over the boating lake in West Park.

It’s a cygnet flying round, then spreading its wings, tail and legs to brake.

Then it lands on the water, before swimming to join the rest of the swans and cygnets on the pool.

Lichens are wonderful composite organisms: communities of a fungus giving the lichen its structure, and an alga or cyanobacterium, photsynthesising its energy supply.

Lichen colours are often subtle, and the varied shapes best seen by looking closely (a magnifying glass often helps).

This crinkly lichen was growing on the trunks of several roadside trees on Compton Hill.

Shovellers feed by swimming along, sieving the surface of the water with their beaks.

Sometimes they turn around, swimming on the spot and rotating surprisingly quickly. This was a pair on West Park lake doing precisely that.