While enjoying my ordinary walk through the fields and meadows along the coastline, around the village called Liznjan, about 5 kilometers from home ...
... I stumbled upon something that looked quite extraordinary ...
... a strange, pot - like form of life ...
... that I never saw before ...
... and I found a hole in the ground ...
... this hole looks empty right now ... but will reveal a nice surprise later in the post.
I took these photographs some weeks ago ... on 25.10.2020. While the signs of autumn were clearly visible in forests, especially throughout the inland of the peninsula, here along the southern shoreline ...
... with fresh grass, no fallen leaves ...
... and the occasional flowers ...
... the season was passing practically unnoticed.
So, when I went on this walk ... I didn't expect to harvest anything interesting for a Fungi Friday post ... but ...
... as you can see - the post is here ... firmly situated inside the Fungi Lovers community ...
... and that's mostly because of these things ...
... that started the post ...
... and will continue to appear in between short excerpts filled with other stuff I saw that day.
The sky was blue ... the sea was blue as well ... fishing boats were on their way in and out of the bay ...
... here you can see two very different kinds of fishing vessels ...
... a relatively large boat that is returning from the open Adriatic after the sardine hunt ... and the small, one man crew, in a traditional small boat for coastal activities. After I took these shots ...
... when I changed my focus from the distance to my immediate surroundings ... I noticed a small Podarcis sicula lizard coming out of the hole in the ground ...
... and this small mushroom was growing near my left shoe ... I almost stepped on it.
When I approached the hole I noticed this, even smaller, mushroom.
Soon my attention was caught by this trio of daisies. I took this shot ... sniffed a bit around the flowers in search for insects ... and then ...
... when I returned to the hole in the ground ...
... the lizard was there again ...
... watching me from the safe point near the entrance ... so I was able to take these two shots before he retreated deeper.
With the lizard gone, I went to do a bit more exploring around those daisies ... and this time I caught an interesting scene ...
... the crab spider Thomisus onustus with its prey ... the Sphaerophoria scripta Hoverfly. I took a few shots ... and then returned to see what's going on with the Podarcis sicula. The lizard wasn't visible when I sat on the ground near the hole ...
... but he appeared soon ...
... and his appearance was braver this time.
The lizard came very close to the lens ...
... almost touched it with the nose. On the way back to the car ...
... I was following the small gravel road ... two small mushrooms were unexpectedly growing there ...
... and at one point ... on the edge of the road ...
... I finally found the main character of this post ...
... the bird's nest fungus - Cyathus stercoreus.
The fruiting body starts its development in the shape of this small protuberance ...
... it grows ... it gets larger ...
... and it develops a paper - like membrane on its top.
At some point the membrane starts to break ...
... and sometimes at this stage ...
... the fungi looks like a broken bongo drum.
When the membrane dissolves the thing looks like some pot with a bunch of black eggs at its bottom.
Among these very interesting little fungi ...
... I found also a bunch of small, elegant mushrooms.
Parasola plicatilis ...
... is the scientific name of this lovely umbrella.
As I mentioned before ...
... this was my first encounter with Cyathus stercoreus in nature.
I saw similar fungi on photographs ...
... I was long aware of this very peculiar fungi type ...
... so, to finally see one of those species in nature ...
... and take a bunch of photographs through the macro lens ...
... was very exciting.
Here you can see two young fruiting bodies still in development, sharp in the foreground ... and an opened, developed one, blurred in the background. I took quite a few arguably unnecessary shots because of the excitement, and the rarity of the find.
Some mushrooms were growing nearby in narrow spaces between the rocks ... I displaced a rock to take this shot.
This group looked very cool in a little canyon.
Some others, just some centimeters away ...
... were growing in a much greener environment.
After I took all those fungi shots, further along the road that leads to my car, I encountered this big black Carabus coriaceus, a pretty large ground beetle species.
As always in these posts on HIVE, the photographs are my work.