The promise of a fine late autumn day was fading by the time we reached Littleferry this morning, the rain arriving just as we left a beach unexpectedly deserted by its wildlife and started back along the links where....
....some were very happy with the change in the weather.
I don't understand why some flowers, like the autumn gentian and Scottish bluebell, bloom so late in the year, when surely most of the insect pollinators have given up. The white gentians are finished leaving only the pale purple ones in one particular spot in the links.
As in the local woodlands, the fungi are thriving. The ones on the right look like scarlet waxcaps, and there were plenty more in a variety of textures and shades including yellow, orange, brown, cream and white, but the species which most interested us was....
....this puffball with its stumpy stem and velcro-like texture which, from above....
....looked remarkably like a sea potato.
After half-an-hour's frustrating search on the internet I decided that it might be the mosaic puffball, Handkea utriformis, which grows quite large then....
....seems to explode before uprooting - we saw several like this.
The promise of a fine late autumn day was fading by the time we reached Littleferry this morning, the rain arriving just as we left a beach unexpectedly deserted by its wildlife and started back along the links where....
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