It's all about scale(s)

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:

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:

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:

Shaggy Parasol - Lepiota rhacodes

A quick look underneath showed the large double ring and the cream gills:

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:

Springtail

Scale? The Springtail is about 2mm long.

Oddments

We had lying snow for around 10 days and I saw no moths during that time: earlier species would have died off, and new specimens would be staying underground until the snow went away. Sure enough, the same day the snow thawed, I found two specimens of the December moth:

Male December Moth

These feed on broad-leaf trees as larvae, and adults can be found from October to January; their eggs staying dormant until the trees have leaves in April or May.

Note the very feathered antennae. These perform a very similar function to the gills on the underside of mushrooms. Feathered antennae are more sensitive, making it easier to find the female, thereby increasing the chances of reproduction. Mushroom gills increase the surface area for spore production, making more spores available and again increasing the chances of reproduction.

As I was taking the shots of the male above, I spotted a minute (3mm) Springtail on the wall just below it:

It looks to be the same species as the one I showed on a mushroom earlier in the year.

A trip to the frozen high area yielded very little. I did see the empty seedpods of Yellow Rattle:

Empty seedpods of Yellow Rattle

And this frozen puddle on the path had an entertaining spiral pattern:

Ice spiral on frozen puddle

I just realised that the images for today are all virtually monochrome.