Mass of chicken of the wood

Mass of chicken of the wood

Chicken of the woods is a bracket fungus, which causes brown rot in the trees it grows on. It’s also a target for the fungi foragers – though not this particular growth, which comes back each year on a fallen willow on the edge of the island in the West Park lake.

Marsh fly on a bulrush leaf

Marsh fly on a bulrush leaf

Bright red fly resting on one of the bulrush leaves on the Compton Park pool, seemingly little worried by the camera’s near approach for these close-up shots.

Filling out: cygnets, West Park

Filling out: cygnets, West Park

By the middle of July, the surviving West Park cygnets had grown almost to adult size, and were spending quite a lot of their time stretched out on lawns preening to remove their juvenile downy feathers.

Filling out: acorns

Filling out: acorns

Acorns from the same oak tree as those pictured in a post a few days ago. These pictures taken three weeks or so later, by which time the nuts had filled out considerably.