Wolves Wild

On my most recent visit to Himley Ppantation there seemed to be squirrels everywhere. These were two which paused as if to have their pictures taken, then retreated even though I was a long way off.

Vivid autumn colours from two Japanese acer bushes with deeply indented leaves, in the park in the Castle Grounds, Bridgnorth.

The Egyptian goose back by teh boating lake in West Park. This time it had managed to get away from the crowds of larger geese, but was still eagerly after bread.

On a mid-November morning a red admiral butterfly rests on the stone wall of a garden, warming itself in direct sunlight.

Birch polypore fungus, also known as the birch bracket or razor strop fungus, is found quite often growing on the trunks or main branches of birch trees. It’s a parasite of the trees, and it’s not unusual for the fungus to have finished the tree off and to be growing on fallen wood, as here.

The fruiting body had various uses: sharpening razors, as tinder for starting fires, and medicinal. Ötzi the iceman, whose five thousand year old frozen body was found in an Alpine glacier, was carrying some some.

View taken only a few yards from the picture in the previous post, looking out of the edge of Himley Plantation to an open field with an oak tree in the middle. Frost remained on the grass in the shadow of the wood, but not on the grass in direct sunlight.