Witch's Butter

It really is astonishing how blind one can be to something which is evidently and fully and very brightly visible, well exemplified on our walk today when, for the first time in weeks, we returned to Golspie Glen.

My attention was caught by a group of very small but rather fine bracket fungi growing on the living branch of a silver birch but I was so intent on these that Mrs MW had to draw my attention to what was right next to them....

....a bright yellow jelly fungus which goes by the name of witch's butter - the namers of fungi do have fun! 

I was amazed that I hadn't notice it but it's a lesson in the blindness that comes with focusing on something which is absorbing. So I can quite see myself engrossed in a dead red squirrel on the railway track not noticing the express which bears down on me.

I haven't managed to identify the small white fungus even though it has a very characteristic scalloped edge which, as always, is frustrating.

Our walk took us from the glen into Dunrobin Castle's upper woods through which a beautiful maintained trail bike track wanders. It passes ancient walls - this one immediately below a broch - but then dives into a horribly dark and closely-packed spruce plantation which has been, and continues to be very good for...

....fungi even though one needs a torch to find them.

Our route took us steadily up hill until we joined a rather slippery road through Backies where Mrs MW had hoped to replenish our supply of beautiful, big, brown croft eggs, to be disappointed. The hens obviously don't like this weather either.