Wolves Wild

A group of earthstars from the Tettenhall churchyard. They are one of the rarer earthstar species, and had clearly been up for some time. They were battered – some looked like they had been kicked.

Most autumns, the corner of Tettenhall Upper Green between the paddling pool and the main road has tiny mushrooms barely peeping out of the short grass. They are parrot waxcaps. Bright yellow and shiny when they first emerge, they later turn to a shade of green somewhat similar to the feathers of some parrots: in some of these specimens, that change of colour is just beginning.

It;s possible that some of these pictures are of a related species. Butter waxcaps are also bright yellow and glossy, but don’t change colour.

It seems likely we’re in for a continuing spell of wet and breezy weather, so it’s unlikely we’ll get a good display of autumn leaves this year. Some bright colours are developing on trees such as ornamental cherries, such as these trees in Bantock Park.

The autumnal storms from the middle of last month brought a lot of rain. At the same time, the temperatures didn’t drop below the seasonal average until very recently. That’s a combination which encourages a lot of fungi to send out their fruiting bodies, at the time of year when the number of species which do so is at the peak. I haven’t been able to get out to anywhere that real surprises are possible. But even strolling around within the city, there’s been a good range of species.

Yellow cracking boletes are normally quite big for mushrooms, with caps which can get up to four inches or so across. This individual had forced its way up in the small patch of open soil surrounding a roadside tree, and was less than one inch.

Japanese anemone flowering earlier this month – isn’t that rather late in the year? I was asked to picture the flowers to show the contrast with the colour of the leaves of the sambucas (black elder) bush behind them. The contrast was more effective in reality than in my shots.

River mists in the mornings are a frequent and visually attractive phenomenon in the Vézère valley. Our brief visit coincided with the September Atlantic storms, so mornings had visibility reduced by heavy rainfall, not mist.

But there was one day when we were walking back from our evening meal when the rain stopped, and a light mist developed. From the level crossing, there was a view down the line to the small railway station. Its lights were all on, though the line was then closed for engineering works.

The mist was given an unearthly glow, tinted a spectral green by the station lights, and orange by those of the nearby road.

The cliffs that define the valley of the Vézère at les Eyzies. High up on some of the cliffs are square holes where beams were located for houses and farm buildings, some up to recent times.

A black redstart on a wall, looking around. It’s a young bird, which hadn’t yet learned the importance of caution.

We’d set off to walk along a quiet road to go to the much smaller village of St Cirq to visit the Cave of the Sorcerer. As we were beginning to get grumpy from the heat and the lack of shade, we came across this praying mantis crossing the road.

Chub in the clear waters of the River Beune, a tributary of the Vézère which as its confluence in les Eyzies.