Scarlet elfcups, small but brightly coloured fungi, develop in the coldest months of winter. But they’re long lasting, and hang around, if sometimes partially nibbled, until the start of spring.
They grow on dead wood, fallen twigs and branches and the like. In recent years they have been scattered between the footpath in the Paddock on the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve and the Smestow Brook itself.
Second butterfly spotted this year. Minutes after a tortoiseshell landed neat the footpath by the canal at Castlecroft (yesterday’s post), a comma obligingly did the same.
Many hedges are formed mainly of rows of thorn bushes: either blacktho0rns or hawthorns. A quick way to tell which has been used from a distance is to see whether the leaves or the flowers are breaking first.
Blackthorn flower earlier than hawthorn, and their flowering season is pretty much over before the leaves appear. These blackthorn flowers are the first ones I spotted, when most other nearby trees of the species were still bare. A little later (perhaps now) a thick blackthorn hedge can look from a distance like it’s covered in a white mist.
Hawthorn is the reverse. Leaf buds start appearing about the same time as blackthorn flowers. The leaves will be fully out before the flowers open. When? There’s a clue in an alternative name for the plant: maY.
Tortoiseshell, the first butterfly I noticed this season, resting by the path along the canal at Castlecroft.
Flowers on one of the yew trees in West Park. Not sure whether these are male or female flowers (the trees only hold one kind or the other).
Blackbird near the river at Bridgnorth. The ground was soft, and the bird was busy catching worms.