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Autumn fungi: shaggy inkcaps

Autumn fungi: shaggy inkcaps

Shaggy inkcaps, also called lawyers wigs. Although I saw these only recently, they are another species which can emerge in any but the cold months of the year. As they release their spores, the caps deliquesce, turning to a black mush heading for the centre.

These look like they were freshly emerged the night before I spotted them.

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Autumn fungi: small oysterlings

Autumn fungi: small oysterlings

Some autumn fungi are easy to spot: big enough and bright enough to stand out from undergrowth. Small oysterlings live up to the first part of their name, less than a centimetre high. So they barely stand out from the clumps of moss which seem to be their usual substrate. They aren’t very vivid either.

These were growing on moss on the top of a stone wall, at a convenient height for macro shots on a mobile. They were at a spot where these tiny mushrooms have reappeared every year since I first noticed them.

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Autumn fungi: glistening inkcaps

Autumn fungi: glistening inkcaps

More from this season’s developing fungi flush. Glistening ink caps are quite common except in the coldest months of the year. They grow in clusters, often larger and closer together than these.

These three groups were neighbours in grass at the edge of a pavement. Probably they emerged on consecutive days, so they show the effects of aging on this species.

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Calm, low tide, Exe at Topsham

Calm, low tide, Exe at Topsham

A wide stretch of mud exposed at low tide on the River Exe. The still water on a calm morning and Haldon Forest on the far skyline project an image of calm. In reality, that calm isn’t helped by the constant drone of the traffic on the M5, which crosses a bridge not far up-river.

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On porpoise (weathervane)

On porpoise (weathervane)

I usually save pictures of unusual weathervanes I’ve spotted for special posts over Christmas, but this one went that step beyond in having the pointer as a 3D representation of a leaping porpoise. Topsham, overlooking the Goatwalk footpath by the Exe estuary.

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Autumn fungi: white mushroom

Autumn fungi: white mushroom

It seems that the autumn fungi flush might be getting going. It’s possible to spot a few different species even when wandering down quiet residential streets.

These mushrooms were on a front lawn, to far away for a proper ID. But they stood out because their caps were very white.

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Tenderness: swans entwining

Tenderness: swans entwining

Two swans with their necks entwined. At the feet of the effigy of Margaret de Bohun, Countess of Devon, in the fourteenth century tomb she shares with her husband, Hugh de Courtney, Earl of Devon.

When swans are paired up (supposedly monogamously and for life) they do engage in their own version of necking, but I have my doubts that the contortions go quite so far as portrayed here.

A swan was the Bohun family heraldic beast, at least according to Wikipedia. The tomb is in the west transept of Exeter cathedral.