Wolves Wild

A fleeting view of a meadow pipit. Like the rock pipit yesterday, this was in Ilfracombe, but this bird was on a road out of sight of the sea.

Another type of mushroom which came along for the ride when vegetation was installed in the recently pedestrianised area in Wolverhampton city centre.

The South West Coastal Footpath passes along the sea front at Ilfracombe, and that’s where this rock pipit obligingly posed on a wall, one December some years ago.

As part of the recent pedestrianisation of Worcester Street in Wolverhampton city centre, a series of plant containers have been set along the road. Several different species of fungi are growing on the wood chip mulch spread in these containers.

One such is common rustgill mushrooms. They’re a species which lives on (and off) dead wood produced by conifers, so that must be what the mulch was made from.

By the Chapel Ash roundabout on the Wolverhampton ring road, there’s a paper-bark birch tree, with its roots protected by a substantial metal grill. Popping up in gaps in that grill were these shaggy inkcap mushrooms.

Lichen growing on the trunks of trees make interesting colours and textures at any time of year. They can be seen more clearly once the trees have lost their foliage.