Wolves Wild

This beetle was heading through short grass with a determined air.

A young bird was using the bandstand roof as a lookout post. On the picture taken with a standard lens (below) it is barely visible silhouetted against the sky.

This was probably another member of the same family, hunting on the ground nearby.

A few cultivated (or escapee) hawkbits were growing on a lawn which was being taken over by wild ones.

The wild plant has yellow flowers, one to a stem. Cultivated varieties tend to the orange. They are sometimes, as here, yellow towards the centre of the flower, may have smaller flowers and more than one per stem.

This velvety-textured fungus can be seen growing at pretty much any time of year. The trees they prefer are elders, as here.

This medicinal herb has been used as a sedative for at least a couple of thousand years.

Blackening waxcaps are small mushrooms which change colour from an ocherous yellow to black. The process has just begun on the first fungus.

These are somewhat further down the road.

From here, the toadstools are well on the way to complete blackening.

They are small enough to be half-hidden in short grass, as are other waxcaps.

These were in the lawn of flats near to West Park.

They don’t trap their prey in a web. Instead, they hunt by stalking and leaping.

On one of the plants being grown in the Conservatory, Bantock House.

Cuckoo spit can be found on many plants in late spring/early summer. Nothing to do with the increasingly rare bird, but a protective foam for an insect larva, a froghopper. This one was on the top of a nettle which was going to seed.

Scrambled egg slime is also known as dog vomit slime. It is common on dead wood, including wood mulch, in wet conditions. So no surprise this arrived this summer.

It was on a tree stump which was also playing host to a bracket fungus, probably some kind of polypore.

Twenty-four hours after these pictures were taken, all that was left of the slime was a dark stain on the wood where it had been.

Yellow staining mushrooms looks rather like the edible field and horse mushrooms, but it is a seriously bad idea to eat them.

The first warning sign is the strong yellow colour when the mushroom is cut, broken or scraped: the colour eventually turns to a dull brown. The colour is showing on these mushrooms, especially in patches on the rims of the caps of the second and third.

This odd-looking fungus is a Ramaria or coral fungus. There are several species which are approximately this yellowish colour.

A second fruiting body, very near the first.

Another picture of the specimen in the top picture. This shot was taken under overcast conditions, and seems to show that the tips (of the basiocarps) are a more vivid yellow colour.