A sunny and frosty winter morning, a small clearing in a patch of woodland by the Avon at Stratford, inaccessible from the footpath where I was standing. A large male rabbit, half dozing, lying where it was getting all possible benefit from the sun’s rays.
Male kingfisher by one of the pools in the nature reserve section of the i54 industrial estate, seen on a sunny, frosty morning.
The bird kept flitting from perch to perch surveying the pool, occasionally diving into the water. I didn’t seem fazed by our presence on the footpath; a dog walker and a jogger had also recently passed by.
The first three pictures in the set were the last taken. It gave the closest views just as we were about to go. All the other shots were taken when it was further away, on a day when I only had a medium-telephoto lens. Even when it’s only a tiny part of the image, the distinctive bright colours make identification certain.
The new year’s catkins hanging from the same twigs as the old year’s seeds on an alder. Picture taken on a walk on Christmas morning.
Female tufted drunk standing above the water of West Park lake, with another female swimming nearby.
Small cluster of velvet shank fungi growing on a fallen tree trunk opposite Cupcake Junction.
Every few years, waxwings begin to run low on winter food in Scandinavia, and there is an “invasion” of these colurful birds which can sometimes reach the far south. It isn’t looking like like this is going to be one of these years, so here is a reminder of the last time they were here in large numbers. That was back in the snowy January of 2013.