The living dead

Autumn can't be far away when the fingers of dead men start to rise from the ground.

They aren't, of course, the fingers of real dead men. They are the fruiting bodies of the fungus Xylaria polymorpha which are known colloquially as dead man's fingers. It is a saprobic fungus, that is to say that it gets its nutrition from dead and decaying organic matter. It is a common inhabitant of forest and woodland and usually grows, as here, from the bases of rotting or injured tree stumps and decaying wood.

The extra offering comes courtesy of an unbelievably ignorant dog walker. I am quite accustomed to seeing bags of dog shite abandoned on the path or left hanging from trees and fences. But this ignoramus has achieved a whole new level of anti-social behaviour. They have simply left a poo-bag lying next to Rover's offering, presumably in the expectation that some-one else will bag it up for them.