Wolves Wild

The herons of the previous post, now flying off. Although I was a long distance away, they probably objected to the attention I was giving them.

Two herons standing in the middle of a field of winter wheat, midway between the canal and the Smestow Brook.

Lichen growing on top of lichen on a canalside tree trunk, all making a semi-regular pattern in yellow, green and grey.

Moorhen swimming along on a canal. First it was in a patch of water reflecting the bright sky, so the camera rendered the bird in silhouette. As it moved, the next picture gave a clearer view of its colours.

Polyanthus in a front garden, flowering in the unusually mild winter as if spring had already arrived.

At least four different species of fungi were growing on a fallen tree trunk by the track at Northycote Farm recently.

The most noticable from a distance were the yellow crowds of small stagshorn, a common jelly fungus. A species of small zoned bracket fungi have also found their way into one of the pictures.

Ear fungus, a common type of jelly fungus. Can be found at any time of year, but most often in the autumn and winter, almost always (as here) growing on elder.

Views just outside Pattingham on a misty mid-December morning.

Electricity pylons fading into the distance; trees silhouetted on the skyline, and the rocket-like spire of the parish church.

Golden jelly fungus also goes by a series of other names: witch’s butter, yellow brain fungus, yellow trembler and the linnaean version, Tremella mesenterica.

This pair of fruiting bodies were growing on a twig almost overhanging the footpath across Compton Rough in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve.

This luxuriant growth on a roadside wild rose bush is a robin’s pincusion. It’s a gall, an abnormal growth caused by a wasp which lays its eggs in the rose’s leaf buds. The gall looked the worse for wear after lots of heavy rain. But it was probably still protecting the wasp larvae due to emerge in the spring.

Delicate umbellifer already putting on its spring growth, beginning to develop a seed head in the middle of December.

King Alfred’s cakes, also known as cramp balls and as the coal fungus. Fairly common, but sometimes similar in colour to the bark of the trees (often dead trees) they grow on, so easily missed. This fungus was used for tinder when lighting fires took real skill.

These were growing on the trunk of a tree, blown down by gales a couple of years ago, at the edge of the Bantock Park Pitch and Putt course. One of the pictures also shows a horses hoof fungus beginning to expand.