Alders by moonlight

After all the rain and wind of recent weeks, the skies have been a bit clearer in the last few days.  When the moon shines through branches in the early evening, it adds a cold but ethereal beauty to the tree silhouettes

But what is this tree with its bunches of little pom-poms and worm-like appendages?

"Two sets of dangly wotsits!  How exciting.  Cones and catkins!  This is surely a completely new species."  (from Will Cohu's book Out of the Woods - the armchair guide to trees, pp 14-18)

A closer look shows last year's cones (or 'conelets' -  they can't really be cones because this tree is not a conifer) . . . . .

 . . . . . and the coming spring's catkins of . . . . .

. . . . the Common Alder (Alnus glutinosa)