Wolves Wild

Growing among wood mulch by a roadside, a lone grey knight mushroom.

Shades of green from some of the mosses and lichens growing on twigs.

Gull on the railing at the edge of the West Park lake. Most winters there seems to be one common gull on the lake joining the flocks of lesser black backed gulls and black headed gulls.

I thought this was the most recent example. Wrong. It’s a lesser black backed as it moves from juvenile to adult – an easy mistake to make, apparently.

Common inkcaps growing on wood chip mulch in Bantock Park. Despite their name, I notice them less often than shaggy inkcaps.

Common inkcaps are anatural source of the chemical used in aversion therapy as a treatment for alcoholism.

Clustering in bunches on the bushes, the berries on purple beautyberries live up to their name. These in West Park, between the floral display area and the lake.

Merridale Grove, a narrow and quiet street, so small I must have passed it hundreds of times over they years without even noticing it’s there and, it turned out, closed off with a gate at the Finchfield Road end.

Underneath a roadside hedge mainly formed of leylandii, a collared earthstar.