An Enchanted Place

On day 147 of 365 Days Wild I wandered out for a nature walk. It was mid afternoon when I left the house. With the clocks now having gone back an hour, this meant that it wasn’t long before I was enjoying some golden hour light. This was particularly lovely down near the stream and pond.

It seems to be impossible for me to go out for a walk these days and to not look for toadstools. There are so many of them about that they’re ridiculously easy to spot. Most of them that I see now are species that I’ve seen before, though some of them I’m still trying to satisfactorily identify.

During this outing I spotted two separate patches of small orange toadstools. I’ve been unable to settle before now on whether these are Scurvy Twiglets (Tubaria furfuracea) or Scurvy Deceivers (Laccaria laccata) as they are incredibly similar to one another. Recently I’ve been leaning slightly more towards Deceivers, simply because most that I’ve seen seen to be lacking the white furriness of Twiglets. I now think we might actually have both of them present. The first patch, near the gate to the neighbouring paddock, are mainly smooth. These, I think, are Deceivers.

The second patch is in the middle of the meadow, and these do have distinctive white fur.

As always, there were quite a few Mycena around in the meadow, and, as always, they’re really hard to identify to species level as many differences are only visible through a microscope.

This little white clump, however, from the look of their slightly translucent stems, might be Milking Bonnets (Mycena Galopus var. candida). To be certain I would need to snap the stem of one to see whether a white, milky fluid is released. If I ever manage to find any more of them I’ll do so!

Toadstools weren’t the only things that I spotted growing in the meadow. I also saw this lone buttercup in bloom.

It may be late October but, amazingly, there are also still bramble blossoms to be found in the hedgerows and within the little woodland, and insects that are continuing to enjoy them.

There’s a lot of holly in the little woodland and along the path of the Millenium Walk. These trees are now filled with red berries. I have a feeling we won’t have much of it about for midwinter decorations this year!

There are also a few 7-Spot Ladybirds (Coccinella septempunctata) still to be found hiding in plant and old growth.

I walked home along leaves covered in fallen leaves. I couldn’t resist kicking through them.

The sun was setting as I made my way along the lanes. I stopped multiple time to photograph the sky through the silhouettes created by the hedgerow trees and over the fields.

My final few shots of the sunset were taken from the bottom of my garden.

That’s all for today. Have you been out on any nature walks recently? I’d love to know.