Wolves Wild

Twisty bark on a mature willow growing by the Smestow Brook at Wightwick. The stream can be seen in the background of the second picture in the previous post.

Glistening inkcap mushrooms which were growing in the bole of a mature willow with twisty bark.

They are quite common, but usually grow in the warmer months of the year. These presumably showed last month thanks to the mildness of the winter.

Remnants of one of last year’s ferns, growing on the end of a tree stump which was fringed with moss.

Clump of daffodils, just sending up the first flower buds.

Despite appearances, the early March day didn’t have a grey sky with white clouds. The picture’s background is the canal at Castlecroft. The colour of the clouds remains, but the blue of the sky has been lost in the reflection by the water.

Finchfield Brook spends most of its short course in underground culverts. Here it is seen in a section which must be fairly near its source.

It pours out of a pipe to flow by a footpath which runs between between Coppice Road and Finchfield Lane, where it is once again covered up.

Further downstream, the stream is again visible west of the Smestow Valley Railway Walk, as it heads for the place where its waters discharge into the canal and the Smestow Brook.

This winter has been a good one for scarlet elf cups, fungi which grow on dead wood (sometimes buried). There have been at least two or three distinct patches of them in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve’s Hawthorn Wood.