Wolves Wild

Another episode in what has turned out to be a series recording the changing appearance this year of berries on the sloe bushes between the Railway Walk and Barley Field in the Smestow Valley Nature Conservation area.

These pictures were all taken in the field just behind Compton Lock a couple of days before Christmas.

This mushroom put up its fruiting body during the snowy period before Christmas. By the time I noticed it, a lot of the cap had been eaten, and there was a covering of snow on the remainder.

The stalks of umbellifers like this are now reduced to hollow woody skeletons, but are still capable of supporting such a weight of snow.

Wightwick Mill lock frozen on Boxing Day.

Berries on a free-standing hawthorn, with the haws and the branches they are growing on weighed down by snow.

As the open water disappeared before Christmas, ducks like this one got even more determined than usual to pester passers-by for food.

Pictures taken after the heavy snowfall before Christmas.

The top two pictures were taken in the Barley Field in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve. The first picture looks towards the trees of Tettenhall ridge over the trees lining the railway walk.

This was taken facing pretty much the opposite direction.

Looking up towards the former railway from the footpath leading to the canal.

Finally a view over the Staffs and Worcs canal, which was well on the way to freezing over.

Compton lock when the trees and towpath were covered with the heavy hoar frost early in December.

Two, or perhaps even three, types of lichen are growing on this branch of a sloe bush. The most leafy of them had a cap of recently fallen snow.

A view along the railway walk with the snow early in December, all looking like it has been designed as a tunnel of trees.

These pictures were taken some days after the one above, when most of the snow had disappeared after a brief thaw, then everything got covered in a thick layer of hoar frost when it refroze.