Eyelash Fungus

A combination of miserable weather and other commitments meant that I haven't taken my camera out for the past three days. Last night we had an emergency dash to Spalding as Molly was having one of her 'episodes'. She was calm and smiling by the time we left - hopefully Christmas will distract her for the next week or so.

Today was at least dry, so I took some time out of Christmas preparations for a walk. The local area is so wet that it was hard to know where to go - there was flooding on one of the local roads that's never previously flooded in all the years I've lived in Peterborough.

I ended up at Southey Wood, which has surfaced forestry tracks and managed to find a few fungi on my route including a humongous Birch Polypore. The extra photograph shows the underside, which was oozing with droplets of water. You can also see a fine dust of fungal spores raining from the pores. 

The Eyelash Fungi in my main image were growing alongside it on a cut birch log. They're fairly common on decaying wood, but are usually quite small, so are easily overlooked despite their orange colour. They were probably the most cheerful objects I saw on my rather damp and muddy walk.