Wolves Wild

Scarletina boletes are a fairly common mushroom which, like all boletes, has pores rather than gills on the undersides of the caps.

When they are cut, their flesh very quickly turns dark blue.

CORRECTION: identified by Lukas Large as lurid boletes

The leaves at the end of two of the twigs of a cherry tree on someone’s front lawn were already turning into the colours of autumn early this month.

Close-up views of a mass of meadowsweet flowers, white petals set off with creamy parts.

Cinnabar moth caterpillars are strongly coloured to warn would-be predators of the toxins they absorb from their food plant, ragwort.

The adults are also brightly coloured, and fly by day.

Lime is one of the last trees to produce its flowers every year. When they arrive they have a strong and sweet perfume.

Whirlygig beetles zooming round the surface of a pond, leaving complex patterns of spreading ripples in their wake.

Young bird, probably a goldfinch, high in a hawthorn bush by the canal where it is crossed by Castlecroft Bridge.

That particular bush seems popular as a vantage point for birds. Earlier on the same day as this picture was taken, there had been a whitethroat. A couple of days previously, a yellowhammer in the same spot.

The rather unprepossessing flower of a bistort, which grow in damp places.

Distorted and discoloured sections at the end of twigs on hawthorn bushes. They are caused by an infection, either of a fungus (rust) or an insect which has laid an egg in the plant (gall).

Bullrushes on the Compton Park pool. The lower, green-yellow portion of the head is still flowering (the yellow is the pollen). On the upper part the flower has already gone over; the seeds will now begin the long process of getting ready for spreading by the wind early next year.

22-spot ladybird. I thought I was keeping far enough away not to disturb it, but as I took these pictures it slowly retreated to the underside of the leaf.

Ragwort growing by the canal at Brewood, with a fly perching on the top of the plant.