Wolves Wild

These pictures feature the front and rear ends of the same moored narrowboat.

Growing right by the umbellifers pictured on the 14th.

During the snowy spell, the ivy berries I saw were either covered only by a small cap of snow, as here, or completely hidden in a blanket of white.

The lock icing up just before Christmas.

From the tree by Compton lock.

Fruits on the same tree were pictured sprinkled with frost in an earlier post.

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.