Wildlife from Wolverhampton and nearby
The land around the river Blythe on the Packhorse Bridge Nature Reserve (Hampton in Arden) is normally marshy. After the recent rains, it has become a series of giant puddles connecting ponds and pools.
I thought I had been walking really quietly. Perhaps I was the first person who had been along the path for some time, because a heron took flight when I was still a long way from it.
Some kind of umbellifer which was flowering at the start of this month.
It was growing on a grassy verge just outside the village of Berkswell. The flowers are elaborate for an umbellifer, so it may have been a cultivated species, an escapee from one of the nearby gardens.
One of the habitats were this fungus is found is in cellars, especially if damp. But these were growing on carpeting which a gardener was using on top of a compost heap.
These had also spread so that they were losing their cup shape, unlike a previous set of pictures of this fungus.
Pony with Appaloosa-style (or leopard pattern) coat happily grazing. A horse with a similar coat is pictured here.
Carr is woodland on damp or marshy ground (and thus prone to flooding) where alders and willows are the dominant trees.
Here the carr is in the Packhorse Bridge Nature Reserve, by the river Blythe at Hampton in Arden.
Another picture of early-morning frost, on the leaves of a bramble.
The leaf on the left has been in the sun for longest: its frost has almost all melted.
The remains of one of last year’s hollyhocks lit by gentle early-morning sunlight.
Earth star fungus, probably Geastrum coronatum, with what appears to be a lid or protective cover detaching itself from the sporocarp, the spherical structure containing the spore-creating gleba.
I’ve never seen anything like it before, nor any reference to anything similar in my collection of Field Guilds or online – possibly because I haven’t looked hard enough.
Seen again five days later. The “lid” was raised higher, but still not separated from the rest.
The path connecting Freshwater Pool (featured yesterday) to the Barley Field in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve passes through a narrow gap between a copse and a hedge.
After rain, the gap becomes muddy, then churned up by the heavy traffic of dog walkers, joggers and other walkers. Freezing solidifies the patterns that have been created.
Another picture from the rare recent frosty morning: an artichoke left on the plant, which was decorated with tiny ice crystals.