A Fungi Explosion

To reach the open hills all we have to do is walk up the Backies road, into Beinn Bhraggie woods and keep going up the forest track. It's a steady uphill slog but there are always things to stop and look at and yesterday....

....it was fungi, in variety and in profusion. This is typical of what we saw, thrusting up through the earth, shouldering it aside, as if the recent wet weather, and now the sun, made it burst with vigour.

I have no idea what this fungus is but....

....some I can identify, like this fly agaric.

Then there are specimens like this one of which I'm very unsure but which may be a splendid waxcap, a fungus which is not common. To have been more certain of an identification I would have had to knock it over to look at the stem and gills, something I wasn't prepared to do.

Again, I'm not at all sure what these are, growing on the stump of a felled pine tree, but they may be oyster mushrooms which, had we the courage, we should have picked and eaten as they are supposed to be rather good.

Then there were several brown fungi, obviously of different species, some of them in masses along the edge of the track, but I haven't the time or skill to identify them all.

We finally emerged onto the open moorland and walked gently along the path that wound through the fading heather. Time was, we'd have walked for miles on such a beautiful day but it's as if the energy is leaking out of us. So we stopped and stood for some minutes enjoying the warmth and the light breeze on our cheeks, and the silence and sense of space that these hills give, before turning for home.