SOME UNEXPECTED SUMMER FINDINGS DEEP IN THE WOODS

Some days ago, on a hot and slightly hazy afternoon, I went walking through the inland woods about twenty kilometers from my seaside hometown ...

... and, pretty unexpectedly, I found some Fungi Friday material along the way.

It took about an hour of walking before I found the mushrooms, deep in the dense forest.

First, I photographed this stag beetle (Lucanus cervus) on the rotting branch by the small, shady path ... and then ...

... I left the path and continued walking through the shrubs and climbing plants covered with spider webs of various types and sizes. The sparse rays of light that were coming through the canopy, created some beautiful effects on these horizontal, silky constructions.

After an hour (approximately an hour) of aimless rambling and sniffing around in various directions, I spotted the first fungal sign ... this sponge - like growth ... that could be the early stage in the developement of some polyporus mushroom, a Gloeoporus dichrous ad example ... but I'm far from being sure about the exact species.

Not far from there, I found some completely developed polypores that have seen better days. They were slightly desiccated and shrunken, kind of mummified. After taking this shot ...

... I passed by a large horizontal web, that looked like one of those circus nets under the tightrope walkers and trapeze artists. The construction was covered with small particles that have fallen from the oak tree.

A few meters from there I found this little umbrella. It looks like the mushroom is growing from the soil ... but actually, the fruiting body was attached to some rotting wood.

Very soon, I found another pale little mushroom nearby. This one was attached to the fallen leaf. I don't know the name ... or anything else about these tiny mushrooms. I regularly encounter many similar species in autumn, but this was the first time I saw this kind of delicate fungi during the dry summer.

At one point, on a relatively small horizontal web, I spotted a spider ... with his prey ... some minuscule fly.

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This spider was photographed on the nearby web, a considerably bigger construction.

The spider was floating all around the web, repairing the thing with fresh new threads.

Some meters further, on some fallen twigs merged with soil and generic rotting stuff, I found more mushrooms ...

... small and pale, probably of the same kind as the ones I already showed you previously in this post.

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This was some pretty lovely, elegant fungi stuff, so I took quite a few photographs from various angles

Another stag beetle was climbing along the trunk of the oak tree in that area.

This Hymenochaete rubiginosa ...

... a crust fungus that grows on rotting wood, of various oak species ...

... was photographed on my way back to the car ...

... and with these perennial fruiting bodies, hard as wood, actually harder than the rotting wood on which they grow ... it's time to end this not too long summer collection from the woods in my Mediterranean area - the Istra peninsula, Northern Adriatic, in Croatia.

As always here on HIVE, the photographs are my work - THE END.