Wolves Wild

One of the group of waxwings by the canal at Compton
last week, here in a rosebush as it was picking off hips to eat.

The old year’s seeds and the new year’s catkins growing from the same tree.

Seeds and catkins were both covered in frost when I took the pictures during the cold spell in December.

Groundsel is never the most spectacular of plants, but this was one of several which was in flower yesterday.

Some seed is also just visible (the white of the dandelion-like dispersal mechanism).

Waxwing, one of a party of a dozen in the Dell Field of the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve, by the canal,
last week.

They were resting in the tops of the taller trees by the canal, then making forays to eat rosehips and haws from nearby bushes.

Small stagshorn fungus are perhaps a centimetre long, but made more noticable by their yellow colour when fresh.

They are common growing on dead wood, like this felled trunk in EastPark.

Velvet shanks are fungi which are one of the few things growing even in the depths of winter. They can survive being frozen solid, thawing, and continuing to grow.

These were on a stump in the grounds of the Chestnut Tree pub in Finchfield.

The leaning remains of Bridgnorth castle, with the church tower behind, as seen on one of the frosty days last month.

The impressive structures growing from this patch of moss are its fruiting bodies, which hold the spores.

The remains of an umbellifer growing by the Birmingham Canal near Aldersley, encrusted in frost during last month’s cold spell.

Unidentified, and rather foxed, fungus which was growing from the base of a wall by a bus stop.

Something must have found it appetising enough to nibble at.

Earth stars are fungi with such an exotic shape they look like they might have been dropped from outer space.

They have a hole in the top of their fruiting bodies for their spores to escape, powered by raindrops landing on it.

These were growing in the front of a garden, possibly associated with the pine trees. Although I walk past the garden at least once a week on visits to the supermarket, the earth stars had been around for some time before I noticed them.

Frosty, misty day view from High Town, Bridgnorth, looking upstream along the Severn.