Images

July 20th – I’m fascinated at the moment by continuing work going on at the sewage pumping station at Green Lane in Walsall Wood. Ever since last Easter, there has been work being carried out here sporadically; from tankers pumping manholes out to new pumps going in and old ones being removed.

I know there’s quite a bit of plant below ground here, presumably to pump the sewage up the hill to the sewage works, not 400 yards away towards Clayhanger. 

I noted this evening yet another pump awaiting installation in the little roadside compound. I have no idea what the problem is, but it’s fascinating watching the comings and goings to fix it.

So many ‘invisible’ services support modern life, it can be a surprise to see how intensively they’re maintained.

July 16th – This curious flower was found in the reed bed at the edge of the canal at Newtown, near the Castings factory. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and it seemed to exist in isolation.

It turns out it’s a common reed: branched bur-reed, and the flowers – little spiky gloves about the diameter of your fingernail – are remarkable. It’s an apparently common canal plant, so I must have seen loads of it and never realised.

I really should open my eyes more!

June 15th – Noticed on a grass verge in Wednesbury, this fine crop of toadstools.I think they’re roundheads, but I didn’t have time to study them closely. But you know you’re advancing through summer when the shrooms are out.

I love to see fungus – such a fascinating, misunderstood part of the ecosystem.

July 12th – I’ve spotted this apparently elderly lady before in central Walsall, near the college. She has a broken tail and a limp but she seems alert, active and very sharp on her feet. 

She hasn’t previously hung about to have her photo taken, and today, as I pulled up gently on my bike, she gave me 20 seconds before she decided to up sticks and run off, glaring at me.

This is a cat with attitude…

July 9th – Finally for today, and for TheStymaster, Denis Jones and others, the Newtown One lives, and is still clearly a bit eccentric.

With the Abbey Road white ducks sadly down to two like the bachelor boys in Walsall Wood (the mallard cross group), it was feared the foxes had claimed Mrs. Muscovy, but no, she’s just getting better at hiding.

She’s not a number, she’s a free duck!

July 7th – Summer’s wheel continues to turn, despite the poor weather, and I was shocked today to note that the rowan berries on the trees by the cycleway in Pelsal were beginning to ripen.

One of the earlier berries of the summer, they add a lovely splash of orange colour to the maturing greenery of high summer.

With days now getting shorter, it really feels like the year is advancing fast now.

July 5th – One of my wildflower joys at the moment is the humble thistle. Not just for the vivd purple brush that forms the flower, but for the delightfully spiky and prehistoric looking buds this curious plant forms.

They may not be conventionally beautiful, but next time you pass a thistle, look closely. They’re amazing things.

July 4th – A first for the year, an oak gall. I don’t know if I’m too early or if it’s just been a bad year for the tiny wasp that creates these galls on oak trees by depositing an egg coated in a chemical which causes leaf or acorn buds to mutate and grow into a gall, inside which a tiny hatched larvae feeds, before drilling it’s way out and flying away.

I normally see a variety from mid summer on – the smooth green type shown here, marble gables which are also globular, but veined with white and pink, and knoppers which mutate gnarly growths from acorns themselves.

It’ll be fun to see if I’m early or if the yield this year is indeed quite poor.