Wolves Wild

Tawny grisette mushrooms making their annual appearance growing through grass. Like many mushrooms, they grow in association with trees: this species can be found with a wide variety of deciduous and coniferous ones.

Heather flowering on a patch of heathy ground on Gospel Oak Common.

Ducklings in the canal at Newbridge, still losing their downy plumage earlier this month. Perhaps a second brood.

Moorhens have raised a pair of chicks on the new pool in Compton Park this summer. The birds have spent a lot of time hiding in the reeds whenever there were people or dogs about. Now this chick is getting older it is spending more time in the open.

Berries at various stages of ripeness with a background of leaves mottled with age and possibly viral infection. Altogether an example of an autumnal colour palette.

These mushrooms are not particularly deceptive – their delicate pale purple colour is quite distinctive. The name comes because they are closely related to another species, simply called deceivers, which are pale brown and so variable in form that it is easy to mistake them for many other types of toadstool.

Striking berries on two spindle trees. One is growing wild by the Smestow Valley Ranger Station (recently opened as a tea room). The other in a front garden of a quiet side street only a few minutes walk away.

Like many other fruit and berries, the haws are ripening early this year, and are more plentiful than usual.

Dead man’s fingers fungus growing through the moss on a tree stump.

This dunnock may have been a young bird – it didn’t seem concerned as I approached along a path in Mary Stevens Park, Stourbridge.

Ripening sycamore seeds backlit by early morning sunshine.

Bees were busily coming in and out of the opening to their nest in a felled tree trunk in Himley Plantation a few days ago.