Wildlife from Wolverhampton and nearby
More pictures of a selection of the Japanese acers in West Park as their leaves turn permutations of red, yellow, orange and purple (!) for autumn. To see how much the colours can change in a week or so, earlier pictures of the first two trees in this set can be seen here.
A quiet residential street, with a jay investigating one of the lawns, then flying onto the roof of the house when disturbed. As is the way when there’s just a fleeting opportunity, I had the wrong lens on the camera.
In Bantock Park, there’s a row of conifers and silver birches on the edge of the pitch and putt course. Most autumns, the area round these trees is good for mushrooms, with several different species including fly agarics.
This year has been quite a good one. The mushroom in these pictures was growing under the same tree as some fly agarics. The warty appearance marked it as some kind of agaric. The domed cap, looking very like a golf ball from a distance, meant it had probably emerged during the previous night.
This was pure white all over. Fly agarics have bright red caps, fading to orange after heavy rain. The white flecks on fly agaric caps are the remains of the veil which protected it when it was forcing its way through the soil. So our pure white mushroom must be a different, much rarer species.
Another visit to the park four or five days later ended such speculations. The mushroom had grown to its full size. As the cap expanded and flattened, the veil had now broken, revealing the red below.
Growing on a conifer stump in a front garden on Richmond Road, plums and custard. Such stumps, or fallen trees, are what these fungi feed on. Their name refers to their distinctive colour: they’re not edible.
The berries on a purple beautyberry in West Park living up to their name. The shrub is also supposed to put on a good show when the leaves turn to autumn colours before dropping off. But that happens very early in the autumn, and I always miss it.
Someone who was responsible for the trees planted at West Park at some point has scattered the park with quite a few different varieties of Japanese acer. From spring right through to the autumn fall they are covered in leaves of differing colours and textures.
One of the more dramatic contrasts is between a bush near the Kingsland Road entrance (above) and a tree in front of the tea rooms (below).
Later in the autumn, the tree will also get more vivid colours unless the leaves are brought down early by the weather.
More autumn mushrooms from Bantock Park. These buttercaps were growing near a beech hedge, in a spot where they’ve also been in earlier years.
These individuals are no longer at their freshest, but apparently the species is considered edible – perhaps somewhat less tempting under their alternative name, greasy toughshank.
OK, this shoveller drake’s plumage isn’t specifically autumnal. Like the brightly-coloured males of many birds, shoveller drakes do adopt a subdued eclipse plumage at the end of the breeding season. But, earlier this month, this one was as eye-catching as ever. To compensate, it spent most of the time with its tail pointing straight at me.
Conical brittlecaps: probably the mushrooms I notice most frequently growing on the wood chip mulch spread under bushes in parks and other spots managed by councils. Presumably the mulch is put down to suppress weeds, but quite often brings a range of fungi.
I don’t remember ever seeing one of the West Park tufted ducks out of the water before. But this drake was standing on a fallen bough, preening. He made a final inspection of some of his wing feathers, stood up and fluttered his wings, then slid back into the water.
Behind was a shoveller drake. More pictures of him soon.