Wolves Wild

Sulfur tuft mushrooms apparently growing in soil. Actually, this fungus grows in wood, and can often be found part way up tree trunks. These are probably coming from a former root hidden in the ground.

Magpie on a garage roof, keeping an eye out for something to eat and to check whether I am a threat.

Tall mature ash tree near the edge of Coppice Wood blow down in the mid-October strong winds. I was told that when it fell it originally stretched across the road, and that several people had been walking dogs in the wood just before it fell.

High up (before the fall) there was a bracket fungus growing from the trunk. Perhaps it had helped to weaken the tree.

Seeds at the end of one of the twigs of a rhododendron bush opposite the entrance to Bantock House.

Roll rims are a common mushroom. Age and splitting of the cap had given these a complex shape.

There’s always birds attracted to the feeding station at Northycote Farm. Last time I went it was this couple of greenfinches.

Birch brittlegills are paler and pinker than the purple brittlegills featured in the previous post. These were growing just a couple of trees away from the purple ones in Bantock Park.

Purple brittlegill, one of several species of mushrooms growing under birch trees and conifers at the edge of the Pitch and Putt course at Bantock Park.

Another of the exotic shrubs planted in West Park so that something will be in flower at pretty much any time of the year. Fatsias originally came from Japan, and have fowers which start to open in the autumn.

Grey mushroom growing near the water’s edge by the canal at Castlecroft.

The delicate colours and elaborate structure of a robin’s pincushion is a gall, the rose bedeguar gall or moss gall. It is caused by a species of wasp which lays its eggs in wild roses.

The robin in the name is not the bird, but the woodland sprite Robin Goodfellow.

The fishing lake at Pool Hall, with the resident pair of swans taking off.

They flew, in a couple of short hops, towards the end of the lake. Then they seemed to start trying to boss around a group of mallards.