Ten days ago, on the 14th of November, I spent a couple of hours in Marlera, the coastal area situated a couple of kilometers from the village of Liznjan and about five or six kilometers from where I live. The soil was still humid from the rain that fell the night before so I found some mushrooms along the way. Not many really ...
... barely enough for a decent contribution to #FungiFriday by @ewkaw
Fortunately, I also found some small arthropods on some of those mushrooms and around them. And I photographed two lizards that were resting not far from there. The animals will certainly enhance this fungi-themed post that's a bit thin on fungi.
This is the Agrocybe pediades, a mushroom that grows on lawns and various types of grassland. I found it by the side of a narrow muddy path on one side bordered with tall shrubs and on the other with a vast meadow.
Here you can see those tall Erica arborea shrubs moving in the warm, gentle wind that was blowing that day. The GIF was created from a series of consecutive shots taken specifically for that purpose.
This is the same mushroom but photographed from a distance so you can also see a bit of the scenery around it.
You can see two more Agrocybe pediades fruiting bodies in this shot.
A couple of meters further, always near the muddy path, there was another mushroom of the same kind. First I took one shot with the flash camera on, and then ...
... I changed the settings and photographed the mushroom in ambient light. Only recently I found out that Agrocybe pediades is an edible mushroom. But I still haven't tried to eat it. With many similar brownish mushrooms around I don't feel confident enough to do it.
In the following photograph...
... the dancing shrubs are frozen in time. Near those shrubs ...
... an appropriately greenish footstool was lying in the grass. It was a piece of garbage but it looked a bit like that thing was designed to be planted in a place like this.
Two lizards were enjoying the comfort of a footstool. In the following two photographs...
... you can take a better, more up-close look at them. This is the first one.
In this enlargeable picture, you can see the second lizard. The name of the species is Podarcis muralis.
This Sminthurus viridis, a springtail from the Sminthuridae family ...
... was walking across the cap of the smaller of the two Suillus granulatus boletes shown in the above photograph. The cap of the bigger mushroom was partially eaten by something. On the soft yellow tissue that's hidden under the brown skin of the cap in normal conditions ...
... I found another tiny springtail.
This is the Entomobrya nicoleti ...
... a species from the Entomobryidae family.
The springtail looked great on the vivid yellow background.
It was a great opportunity to get a few portraits of this very small arthropod that, despite quite a few similarities with insects, isn't an insect.
This Aiolopus strepens grasshopper was resting on the grass near the two Suillus granulatus fruiting bodies.
Here you can see two lovely, fresh & young Agrocybe pediades mushrooms. In the following photograph ...
... I zoomed in on one of those two mushrooms. After taking two photographs using the flash of my camera ...
... I took one in ambient light.
This juvenile Micrommata ligurina, a spider from the Sparassidae family, was resting on the small blackberry shrub across the path, five or six meters from the mushrooms. On the humid soil near the edge of the path ...
... I found a bunch of cyanobacterium that formed something that look like algae. The scientific name of this slimy little thing is Nostoc commune.
On the way back to the car, I stopped to photograph a place where someone threw the cut pieces of a palm tree.
The Mirabilis jalapa plant which usually grows in gardens or between the stones at the base of the old stone houses in old towns and villages, was prospering among the remains of the palm.
AND THAT'S IT. AS ALWAS HERE ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK.
The following links will take you to the sites with more information about some of the protagonists of this post. I found some stuff about them there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrocybe_pediades
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podarcis_muralis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suillus_granulatus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sminthurus_viridis
https://www.naturespot.org.uk/species/entomobrya-nicoleti
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiolopus_strepens