I went for a short walk yesterday afternoon, to the woods around one of the neighboring villages, about ten kilometers from where I live, in search for flowers, insects and spiders mostly ... but ...
... I found this ...
... on the rotting piece of oak along the small path that leads through the forest, from the edge of the village to the sea ...
... so, all that I photographed on that short excursion ...
... unexpectedly turned into a Fungi Friday post ... that I wasn't hoping to publish till autumn due to the usual lack of fungi here in my area, during the warm part of the year.
Since the springtime has brought a lot of animal activity around these woods ...
... besides the fungi, I photographed some insects as well ... like this minuscule fly ...
... and this much bigger one ... they share some similarities in shape and color, but these are different species.
The smaller one is the Scaptomyza flava fruit fly from the very large and varied Drosophilidae Family, and the bigger one is the Suillia fuscicornis from the much smaller Heleomyzidae Family.
I shot also this minuscule yellow ant ... and then ...
... I noticed the fungi ... I actually started the walk with insects, not thinking about any kind of mushroom or any other fungi stuff at all.
This is the Hymenochaete rubiginosa, commonly known as Oak Curtain Crust. It looks just like some crust on the dead wood from this angle ...
... but, if photographed from slightly above ...
... it looks a bit like some kind of curtain.
These perennial fruiting bodies are hard and leathery, present here in the forest in every weather condition.
There was a bit of silk ...
... spread above some of the fungi ... and after taking these shots ...
... I noticed some minuscule spiders hanging around me ... I don't know what species they are ... this one was just resting in the center of his web ... and the one on the following photograph ...
... was feeding on some even smaller insect, you have to know that the spider is already minuscule ... so the little black thing in his fangs is more micro than macro. I found out that thin silky threads are all around me, once I started to notice them I saw more and more of them ... the place was filled with traps ...
... and this minuscule wasp ended up caught in one.
I took almost all of these photographs with the flash on, because I was in the deep shade under the shrubs and trees ... in some cases that created fat, black shadows that accentuated the texture made by a multitude of fungi covering the wood, and although I was pretty satisfied with that effect ...
... I wanted also some shots with more subtle, natural light, that makes all details visible ... here I combined the long exposure with a very low flash.
While sitting there, surrounded by lush vegetation, I noticed some cool green plants as well ...
... and I took a few shots of one of them. This is the Allium neapolitanum, some sort of wild garlic ... some beautiful white flowers are hidden here, beneath the green surface ... and on the following photograph ...
... you can see them coming out of the thin green envelope ... and now ...
... with the last look at the old, rotting, fungi - covered stump that stands like some ancient totem ... is time to end this unexpected Fungi Friday entry ... as always in these posts on HIVE, the photographs are my work.
