Each evening thousands of rooks and jackdaws fly over my house on their way to an overnight roosting spot about 3 miles away. Yesterday they flew over just as I was putting the camera into the car and I snapped this shot of some of them:
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| Swarm of rooks and jackdaws heading for roost |
I thought then that they could easily be mistaken for a swarm of midges.
As soon as I parked the car at the hedgerow, I looked up and saw a cloud of midges:
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| Cloud of midges. |
And I thought to myself that they could easily be mistaken for a horde of rooks and jackdaws. It's all a matter of scale.
Halfway along the walk I spotted this scaly mushroom on the rear bank of the ditch:
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| Shaggy Parasol - Lepiota rhacodes |
A quick look underneath showed the large double ring and the cream gills:
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| Shaggy Parasol - Lepiota rhacodes |
I'm making a spore print, but I have no doubt that it's the Shaggy Parasol -
Lepiota rhacodes. Again, it's all a matter of the scales.
The underside of the mushroom was home to dozens of microscopic insects, and I got a decent shot of this Springtail before it ran for cover between the gills:
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| Springtail |
Scale? The Springtail is about 2mm long.
