Santa Claus is (very loosely) based on a real historical figure. St Nicholas was bishop of a see in part of what is nowadays Turkey. He’s the patron saint, among many other churches, of Beaudesert church, Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire. The church has this splendid product of blacksmithing as its weathervane.
Yes, I know the twelve days of Christmas don’t start till the day itself. But the posts over the holiday period will be ones where I don’t need to get out and about to find wildlife and nature subjects.
Instead, they will be shots I’ve gathered over the years of weather vanes, door knockers, and today a wall decoration, some with animal themes.
This iron hummingbird was on a house in a quiet street in Topsham on the Exe estuary.
A mossy lawn, with the vegetation covered in ice crystals on the first frosty morning this winter.
Honey fungus around the base of the remaining stump of one of the trees which it’s finished off.
The bright red leaves and berries of a front garden cotoneaster fringed with frost. I was struck by the one nonconfirmist leaf, stubbornly staying green.
More blewits, this time growing in West Park. Probably wood blewits, but I didn’t examine them very thoroughly.