Splashy Chase

11 January 2014

Newmillerdam Country Park

I can't see clearly enough at this distance to see who's chasing who but the body language says it all; it looks like a cob (male) chasing his rival. His rival might be his now grown-up male cygnet.

The pursuit continues for at least twenty minutes, sometimes culminating in a splashy airborne chase across the surface of the lake.

Birch Bracket

It's mild but in January there isn't much fungus in evidence, apart from bracket fungi on stumps and logs and this birch bracket, Piptoporus betulinus, on a dead birch at the top end of the woods above the causeway.