TURKEYTAIL AND DEVIL'S MATCHSTICKS

This should really be another bits and pieces post, but with such brilliantly descriptive names that we have for our flora and fauna, I couldn't resist using them. I've only just found out about the Devil's Matchsticks, having struggled to identify the various red tipped Cladonia lichens, I can now go colloquial. I managed to find the lichen book I've been wanting for over a year now but have not been able to afford, for £5.00 plus the postage, and it should be arriving in the next few days. It's an ex-library copy. Very exciting and I hope to be boring you rigid with it very soon. 

We saw these fabulous Turkeytails on a very unsuccessful blackberry picking trip yesterday afternoon, along with lots of other fungi and lichens, and here are those Devil's Matchsticks - two different types:

Very early Fly Agaric before its white spots have appeared or the top spread out:

These next two fungi were impressively big:

I should really have waited for the book for these two but they were so stunning. I should also have put something to show the scale of them. They are absolutely tiny. 

Strange plump heart-shaped fungus:

A huge Dung Fungus:

No idea but the gills were so beautiful:

Dew on Gorse:

Foggy scenes from a few days ago:

Wet Jack:

Chink in the cloud:

Cloud hills:

View on the way to the river today:

I think Jack may be more of a water hound than Snippet...........

......who hates getting in - he was whimpering when I took this and I had to lift him off the tussock and dump him in:

I'm hoping my mothy friends will be able to identify this tiny character I found dead on the kitchen worktop this morning; less than a centimetre long. An Antler moth - thanks David and CT!

A Speckled Wood basking on the washing on Saturday. My first butterfly this year to keep still long enough for me to get really close:

Today, having failed to have beef tomatoes delivered in my internet supermarket shopping last week, I asked for them in our very tiny greengrocer's in Chagford (see below - it's about three feet wide inside).

My request was greeted as if I had asked for caviar with the comment that:

"We don't get much call for them these days" (with a raised eyebrow).

I should point out that Chagford, by rural standards, is extremely cosmopolitan. Am I missing something here? There were none when I rushed into Exeter's branch of Sainsbury's over the weekend either. Any theories received with interest. 

The Christmas card choices are very interesting and I'll be ordering them this week. Not the ones I would have chosen so I'm very glad I asked you or no one would have wanted them by the look of it. I'll Keep you posted. Until next time, here's lovely Snippet in the grass.