Wolves Wild

A robin high in a hawthorn bush, singing.

It may sound pleasant to us, but a rough translation is “who do you think you are looking at?”

West Park as it looked this lunchtime. I was very surprised how few people were aroumd.

Mushrooms pictured at the start of November on the site of the former Hazeldine and Rastrick Foundry at Bridgnorth.

The site is by the river, reached nowadays along the footpath between Severn Park and the bridge.

Catch-me-who-can, the first locomotive to pull trains carrying paying passengers, was built in the foundry in 18-8

The train ran on a circular track near the site of the present-day Euston station.

The mushrooms seemed to be growing on the mulch of the small garden which is now there to commemorate this piece of engineering history.

Three views of a robin perched on a twig during the snow a little while ago.

It was waiting its turn to eat some of the grain left out in a bird feeder.

There is a pair of pied wagtails living in the rooftops of Chapel Ash. I’m not sure how they manage to get enough to eat, because they flee whenever a pedestrian or a car passes by.This one stayed just long enough for me to get my camera out and fire off one shot.

A view of the Birmingham Canal as it mounts up to the Black Country plateau from Aldersley Junction.

Wolverhampton Racecourse is on the opposite side of the frozen canal, behind the hedge on the right.

The city’s refuse incinerator in the background is one of the few signs that the picture wasn’t taken deep in the countryside.

Silverleaf is a bracket fungus with a zoned and hairy-looking upper surface. It grows on trees and tree stumps, plum trees for preference. Plum tree leaves change to a silvery colour with an infestation of the fungus.

The furry appearance of the upper surfaces is what I find most striking about the fungus.

It’s been growing on this old stump by the lake in West Park for some years now. The pictures are of recent new growth, taken just before the start of the current cold spell.

Not sure what sort of bush produces these purple berries: they were on a plant in West Park.

Two of the spiderswebs on the bridge over the Severn at Bridgnorth, given additional emphasis by a coating of frost.

Deceivers are common small brown mushrooms which seem to prefer periods of cool weather. They are “deceptive” in the sense that they are very variable in colour.

These were in one of several patches of the fungus by the canal towpath near Wightwick.

CORRECTION: identified by Lukas Large as possibly scurfy twiglets