Toft Meadow - First Frosts

A light ground frost last night and a beautiful clear sunny morning though, with strong northly wind, it felt very cold. The Bourn Brook and Meadows looked stunning in the clear morning light and there were lots of icy toadstools to photograph so a couple of hours disappeared from a busy schedule!

Paxton's Small Fungi and Slime Moulds

 Very enjoyable walk with Ann and Mike at Paxton on a Slime mould hunt, which proved successful with one definite species and possibly a second one. Ann found an extensive colony of the green Elf Cup. Amazing how many small creatures also lived on rotting logs including Collembolids as on the first image, the appropriately named Winter Moth and Centipedes. When we looked hard at the mossy areas ther were small toadstools still present. Light was poor and images handheld so not great quality!

Small World at Potteric Carr

I stopped at Potteric Car nature reserve yesterday on my way up to Keighly for the YPU Day and spent a couple of hours photographing ' Caps' like the Green Elf Cap, Grey Disco and Yellow Fairy Cap plus several Slime Moulds and minute Fungi. The last image shows Shield Bug eggs plus a small Collembid

The Regal Cambridge

A few images taken through the rippled glass windows of the hall at St Andrews Church of the back of Wetherspoons and the Geology Museum - candidates for a talk I am writing on photographing architecture creatively.

 

Flowering Late or Early - Climate Change?

With the lack of frosts and the generally moist and relatively warm conditions, there are lots of wild flowers open in my Cambridgeshire garden that would normally be dormant such as the Red Campion, Dandelion, Primrose, Knapweed, Chicory (a new self-seeded species this year) and Chickweed plus some naturalised species - Linaria, Alkanet and Corydalis. Various garden perennials are still flowering or are starting early like the Jasmine and Erysium (wallflower) while some annuals such as Cosmos and Marigolds are from this year's seeds.