Wolves Wild

The full opening of lesser celandine flowers is for me one sign that spring is finally really arriving.

These were in a sheltered front garden in the first week of March.

Great tit and blue tit grabbing some seeds from the same feeder at Northycote Farm.

Velvet shanks which have already been around for a few days. They have something, perhaps a mould, growing on their upper surface.

These were growing in the same place at the same time as those in the previous post.

Velvet shank fungi are among the few brightly-coloured growing things in the depths of winter.

These were growing from a tree trunk fallen across the platform near the Smestow Valley Ranger Station a month ago. Although they had only freshly grown, something had already begun to nibble at them.

Mahonia early-spring flowers, some still as unopened buds, others already losing a few petals.

Flowers beginning to come out on another of the shrubs in West Park.

Bird footprint left behind in soft mud. I didn’t see the bird which made it, but based on the birds feeding on the ground nearby it may have been a blackbird or a song thrush.

Pink and white hellebores, flowering by a roadside on a sunny morning after rain recently.

View across the canal just outside Castlecroft. Remarkably rural-seeming views can be seen just a few minute’s walk from Wolverhampton’s city limits.

Magnolia buds just beginning to open. Their fur-like covering seems to belong to a small mammal.

One of the greylag geese on West Park boating lake, attracted to the shore by someone throwing bread for the birds.

A sight which probably won’t be on show many more times until next year now. A thistle with its new growth covered in early-morning frost.