2 January may not seem like a good time for mushrooms, but even now there are interesting and beautiful species to be seen. The Variable Oysterling, Crepidotus variabilis, is as its name implies able to take on different appearances. Here its small cap is distinctly fluffy with tufts of hyphae. The gills are fairly widely spaced, and extra ones are inserted (ok, intercalated) towards the edges.

The Osiers – long thin whippy poles of willows ideal for basket-making – are seen at their most colourful in midwinter.

A flock of sixty or more grass-eating Wigeon, the males handsome with rufous heads complete with yellowish Mohican centre-stripe, grazed hungrily on the lush grass of the marsh. It must be a lot more welcoming than the frozen wastes of Scandinavia or Arctic Russia, where these birds have probably flown in from.