Fungi Friday - TWO EXCURSIONS IN THE BAY

The weather was cloudy and humid ...

... yesterday when I drove to the bay of my hometown, Medulin, after buying some stuff in the grocery store.

The light arriving through the layer of clouds was pretty gray and dull, but with many dandelions around ...

... the overall atmosphere was actually pretty colorful.

I didn't stay long, didn't find much Fungi Friday material, just a small cluster of some unidentified mushrooms ...

... so I turned my focus to other colorful stuff around me. I photographed a colorful boat on the main fishing dock not far from there ...

... and this colorful little hotel in the distance.

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During the night, after a bit of rain, the weather started to change. The dry northern wind cleared the sky and today, late in the morning ...

... when I returned to the bay, after buying the fresh bread and some other edibles in the grocery store near the port ...

... I found a small butterfly basking in the sun.

This is the Lycaena phlaeas, commonly known as the small copper. A few meters further ...

... on the path bordered with pine trees and various shrubs ...

... I came across Russula Vesca mushrooms.

Some of them came out slightly deformed and broken ...

... through the hard, stomped soil of the path.

In the grass around the mushroom, I found just one small flower ...

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... that looks like some strange, alien animal, from a certain angle.

This is the flower of the Kickxia commutata plant.

About a hundred meters further, at the end of the path, I photographed another pair of Russula Vesca. These two were well hidden under the vegetation, I had to remove a bit of grass to get this shot. Very close to the mushrooms ...

... I found this beautiful moth ...

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... the Phlogophora meticulosa, commonly known as the Angle shades. A bit further ...

... in an area with short, sparse vegetation, I noticed a little sphere on the ground ...

... the Bovista dermoxantha, a puffball mushroom species.

I found four puffballs there, and each one had different scars on its outer crust. This one was decorated with long furrows.

In this and the following two photographs ...

... you can see the one covered with some kind of bait markings.

This looks like the work of some snails.

The third puffball ...

... had a combination of bait markings and wrinkles.

... and the last one - a fresh bait marking on its top, and what looked like an old scarred area on the side. After taking this shot I continued my walk, and after some time I arrived in the shady, humid place covered with slightly more exuberant vegetation.

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There, in the slightly taller and definitively more dense grass, I found this little humanoid creature. I mean, it looked like an Elf, buried up to the neck. From a distance, at least. When I came closer to take this shot, it became clear that this is just the head of some decapitated toy. I noticed a bit of potential horror in this scene ...

... so I created this Black&White version to get closer to fulfilling that potential. It looks more creepy with no colors around. After some more sniffing around this area ...

... I encountered more mushrooms.

This is the Agaricus augustus, an edible, very tasty & meaty mushroom with a large, distinctive cap.

Here you can see the young, compact fruiting body ...

... coming out of the ground through a layer of small roots, rhizomes, and moss intricately intertwined to form a pretty resistant natural carpet. A few meters further ...

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... there was a fully developed Agaricus augustus that passed through the same soil while growing.

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The mushroom was still partially covered by the aforementioned "carpet".

I took a couple of shots, and then ...

... after this fungi encounter of the Third Kind ...

... I walked to the nearby sea.

There, on the sunny shore, the Vanessa atalanta butterfly was collecting the minerals from the humid mud in between little stones. While I was photographing the butterfly ...

... a big, colorful fly landed on some driftwood before my feet.

This is the Volucella zonaria, a hover fly that mimics the European hornet.

A bit further, very close to the water, I encounter a grasshopper as well ... and then ...

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... about twenty-thirty meters from the shore, in the juicy green grass ...

... I found a small cluster of mushrooms ...

... that I already photographed yesterday.

Do you remember those unidentified mushrooms from the beginning of the post? Well, these are the same mushrooms.

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If you compare the two shots in this enlargeable picture, you'll see that the caps of the mushrooms are slightly more spread today and the dry, windy weather caused some cracks on the surface.

I took another photograph using only the natural light ...

... said bye-bye to the bay and drove away. That's it.

As always in these posts on HIVE, the photographs are my work - THE END.