A very wintery feel to the Park this morning, despite the mild conditions, with a strong south-westerly wind roaring across the Park, carrying with it fat blobs of rain and filling the air with a thickening fog – lovely!
A Green Woodpecker bobs across the Car Parks, ‘yaffling’ as he goes, with the clear, sweet notes of a Robin, trying to outperform a rival from a dense Blackthorn hedge near the Reservoir Copse. A Blackbird probes the soft turf around the edges for breakfast, with a Herring Gull wandering rather incongruously around the top car park
Considering the weather, a patrol through the woodland seemed like a good idea this morning! A variety of fungi are taking advantage of the damp conditions, with the bulbous grey-black Dead Man’s Fingers common on many of the fallen logs, along with the pale antlers of Candlesnuff Fungus, glossy black Cramp Balls (or King Alfred’s Cakes), along with a variety of bracket fungi, including the intricately patterned Many-zoned Polypore.
With trees bare of leaves and little vegetation on the woodland floor, what remains is a surprisingly varied palette of greens, from the dark green leaves of Ivy, glossy tufts of Soft Rush, spikes of Stinking Iris, (adorned with a few orange seeds), with bramble leaves in every possible shade from brown, to green, to crimson, to gold, sometimes all in the same leaf.
Durlston Bay is covered with a blanket of mist, with the croak of a Raven echoing out of the fog. On Caravan Terrace, a few Goldcrests weave through the canopy with piercing calls, with Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long-tailed Tit among the scrub along the cliff-face and a Dunnock shuffling through the undergrowth below.
A charm of Goldfinches bob along the top of the Lighthouse Field, their jangling calls often described a resembling the sound of sleigh-bells!