A young magpie in West Park which landed only a few yards from me. It seemed determined that I would move off before it did, and that was what happened.
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Young magpie stepping out, West Park
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Hoof fungus with spores
Hoof fungus is quite a common parasite of trees, usually found near the base of an infected tree’s trunk. There were fruiting bodies all round the stump of one of the trees in West Park. It looks like someone has spilled a lot of cocoa powder on the lower of these two fruiting bodies. That’s some of the spores which have been released from the lower surface of the fruiting body above.
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Bracket fungus growing on a whitebeam
Some kind of bracket fungus growing on one of the whitebeams on a quiet residential street. It’s still fairly young. It may develop markings later, and make it easier to identify its species.
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Cotoneaster berries ripening
It’s getting to be that time of year when the various sorts of fruits and berries start to fatten up and to change colour as a visible sign of how ripe they are. These were on a cotoneaster in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve at Newbridge.
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Preening heron on West Park willow
The first heron we’ve seen in West Park for some time: probably the first this year. It was on one of the fallen willows on the island, a popular perching point for visiting herons, busy preening its feathers. By the next day it had gone.
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Sugar stealer trapped
A sugar stealer: feathery wind dispersed seed, possibly from a willowherb, trapped a few inches from the soil by the vegetation it landed in.