Lumpy

My morning was spent largely in the kitchen, turning some of our glut of windfall apples into apple and chilli chutney, and clearing out the fridge. I'm trying to ensure that I've got plenty of space ready for the wedding baking blitz which I plan to start on Wednesday. 

In the afternoon I headed to Old Sulehay Forest - it was so mild that I went in shirtsleeves, very unusual for this point in the year. The gales of 30th October had wreaked havoc along the southern edge of the wood - many fallen trees blocking the path, and quite a few trunks and large branches precariously hung up in other trees. The oaks and field maples had borne the brunt of the destruction, probably because both are still pretty much in full leaf, but a few ash had also suffered. 

The dry mild weather meant that I saw few fungi, but while I was examining a large beech log this unusually shaped spider dropped in front of me. Cyclosa conica is usually found in well wooded areas, often in deep woodland. It builds a web with stabilimentum (lines across the centre of the web) which it often covers in dead insects. When a fly hits this spider's web it will immediately rush straight towards the fly, most spiders will shake their webs first.

I wanted to get some photographs to help me identify the spider but I was travelling light and hadn't taken my flash, so had few expectations of anything usable from such a deeply shady location in the late afternoon. I knew the R6 was good in low light but was still surprised at how well this came out given the ISO was 25,600! The images has also peen processed in Topaz Denoise, which helped.