Compton Park water feature

Bridge over the Graiseley brook

Pool with a brand-new wooden bridge over it.

The pool is on the course of the Graiseley brook, previously culverted, shortly before it joins the Smestow. It has been created as a centrepiece of the housing estate being developed on part of Compton Park in association with the upgrading of the Wolves training ground.

Fly agarics almost hidden under grass

Fly agaric almost hidden under grass

Fly agarics growing beside a footpath popular with joggers and dog-walkers.

Fly agaric almost hidden under grass

These were hard to spot under the grass. Others had been more prominent, so they had been kicked over.

Half-grown moorhen chick

Half-grown moorhen chick

Although this moorhen chick on the canal at Compton is half-grown, and should probably have learned to be wary of humans. It swam towards me.

Half-grown moorhen chick

Perhaps it was expecting to be fed.

Half-grown moorhen chick

Wild carrot flowers

Wild carrot flower

My ageing guide books claim that wild carrot flowers from June to August. This was one of many wild carrots by the towpath of the Birmingham Canal which was still flowering earlier this month.

Wild carrot flower

Bugloss flowering, October

Alkanet flowering, October

Buglosses are a group of flowers related to borage. The plant itself is sturdy, with stiff “hairs” to discourage animals from eating it.

The pale blue flowers seem disproportionately small (at least to me) for such a tall plant.

It’s quite common near to canal towpaths locally, and flowers for most of the summer and autumn.
This one, by the lower end of the Birmingham Canal, still  had lots of flowers earlier this month.

Meadowsweet flowering by a canal

Meadowsweet flowering by a canal

Meadowsweet seems to like a setting right by the canals locally: between the towpath and the water.

This one was still in flower recently

Pushing through the debris

Pushing through the debris

A line of close-planted leylandii create a near-sterile zone around their base, in part because the debris they shed acts as an effective growth-inhibiting mulch.

Pushing through the debris

The mushrooms poking through this debris here are an agaric species, as indicated by the ring on the one in the picture above, which had been disturbed to show at least part of the stem.

Pushing through the debris