Wolves Wild

Sonwdrops opening. These show every year beside the footpath leading from the Pear and Partridge to the smaller pool at Perton.

I went back to West Park yesterday, taking my (very heavy) biggest telephoto lens to get better shots of the young cormorant which is currently hanging round on the lake. As luck would have it, the bird was actually perching on a much nearer rail. It kept posing, spreading its wings and slightly shaking them to dry the feathers. I took a lot of pictures!

It’s possible the bird is staying overnight at the Pendeford Mill Nature Reserve, where one has been seen by @marcouccellini_ leaving in the mornings and returning in the evenings.

Possibly the brightest splashes of natural colour which appears in the depth of winter is on the fruiting bodies of scarlet elf cups. The bright red of the insides of the cups is easy to miss: the largest cups are thimble-sized; they grow on dead wood, so they are often half hidden among the debris under trees. They spring up around the middle of January, then hang around for a few weeks.

These were in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve, in spots where they’ve been coming back each year for a decade or more, behind the former Tettenhall station and by the footpath in the Paddock.

A young cormorant which had turned up on one of the West Park islands yesterday morning. It spent most of the time we were there standing on the guard rail around the island. Occasionally it spread its wings to dry its feathers, and once it bent down to take a drink of water.

As we were about to go, it took to the water. On its first three dives, it came up without catching anything. But with the number of fish in there, it won’t have gone hungry.

Someone at Perton seems to be a member of the “crotchet covers for pillarboxes” movement, and their speciality seems to be seasonal festivals with the inclusion of 3-D animals.

Last year (I noticed it in December 2021 to be precise) a crotchet with a Christmas-card feel which included robins and a penguin. On a visit to the estate a few days ago, I pictured the latest offer. The recent Chinese new Year saw the start of the Year of the Rabbit. The centrepiece of the crotchet was indeed a rabbit, standing alongside one of the dragons which feature in Chinese New Year parades.

Shortly before January’s snow and ice all melted, scenes along the Smestow Valley. The canal from the canal bridge at Newbridge, and glimpsed between the girders of Meccano Bridge. Further along the Railway Walk, the path at level crossing leading to the Barley Field.