Victoria Park in October – autumn trees

A grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) among fallen chestnut leaves in Victoria Park, Cardiff

Autumn is well under way in Cardiff’s Victoria Park and the trees have come into their own. Meanwhile the parks staff have cleared out all of the flower beds to prepare them for next spring. What a difference from the colourful displays of September (see my previous post here). These are my October images…

Bare flower bed

Another bare bed, by the beach volleyball courts…

…but at least we still have the Cordyline australis, also known as cabbage palm or Torbay palm…

…currently fruiting

Weeping silver lime…

…and its fallen leaves

A dog walker

This magnificent tree may be a candidate to follow next year…

…but I do not know the species…

…the leaves are familiar…

…I’m thinking it may be a walnut of some sort…

…is the bark a clue?

I also can’t identify this small tree…

…the leaves

This is easier to recognise…

…a maple (Acer) – possibly a red maple or even an Amur maple

Sadly a small, knobbly dead chestnut tree that has been interesting all year has now been felled

Ash (Fraxinus) and horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum)

Chestnut leaves…

…and some more…

…and the chestnut trunk, which has suffered much attention from the park keepers over the years

Ash tree…

…dark bark and yellow leaves, a bit like that “walnut” pictured earlier?

Cherry tree (Prunus)…

…cherry leaves

Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) trained into a horizontal shape…

…hornbeam leaves

Gull in the grass

Pigeon or dove – possibly a young wood pigeon with no markings yet?

Another horse chestnut

Foraging jackdaws (Corvus monedula)

A quiet day at the bandstand…

…and a lost Peppa Pig ball stranded on top

And finally, on the way home, I saw that Thompson’s Park had also been stripped of its flowers…

The pond in Thompson’s Park