Wolves Wild

Frosty bramble (blackberry) branches with their vicious thorns.

Some treescatkins start appearing before the start of the year, so they are often covered in frost on cold mornings. Hazel are among the first.

This West Park magpie landed and started watching me when I was taking pictures of a squirrel in the next tree. It seemed to be hoping that I would feed the squirrel, so that it could slip in and get some of the goodies.

Abundant gold-green coloured catkins on a hazel bush lit by bright sunlight, looking to my eye like streaks of falling rain.

Scarlet elf cups are distinctive small fungi which grow on dead wood, appearing during the winter. This season’s first ones started appearing at a couple of sites in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve in the cold spell between Christmas and New Year.

This was the largest individual I managed to find, a centimetre or so across, with growths of frost crystals inside and out.

Ivy flowers at the very end of autumn, so its berries are ripening in the coldest months of winter. These were covered in frost after cold nights.

Clump of mushrooms growing climbing up the trunk of a tree in the Castle Gardens at Bridgnorth.

Clumps of reed leaves growing by a canal, decorated with early morning frost.

Shaggy inkcaps deliquesce once they have released their spores – the caps turn into a slimy-looking black mess. Normally that happens from the edge of the cap towards the centre, but seemed to be working in the opposite direction in these mushrooms.

Meadowsweet are summer flowers of damp places. These, growing right at the edge of the canal, were still around to get dusted in frost after a cold night.

Bright orange velvet shank mushrooms have one of the brightest natural colours of winter, especially when they are moist and glossy.

They grow on the trunks of deciduous trees, living or, as here, fallen.

The remains of hollyhock flowers, some covered in early morning frost. The others were in direct sun, so the frost had gone in the few minutes since dawn.