Autumn

 It's definitely looking autumnal now, with the leaves falling and changing colour. I was raking up some leaves in the garden when I spotted a hedgehog.  He/she was  munching on something  so I went to get my phone for a photo.  Hedgehogs always give an impression of being cute, but when I looked at what was being eaten it was a dead field mouse... 

I don't expect to see a hedgehog during the day and my garden is rabbit proofed so when he tried to climb up the netting to move on, I picked him up (carefully, with gloves on,  as those prickles are sharp) and put him in some unfenced woodland.

While walking along the Main Street in Newtonmore, I stopped to look at the lawn in front of the Monarch Apartments (once the Craig Mhor Hotel) which has an extensive crop of fungi growing on it. My favourites have to be the ink caps (Coprinus species) which start off as fat fingers poking up through the soil.

Then they self destruct into drippy black caps.

The caps release an enzyme that dissolves the cell walls in the cap and gills but leaves the stem standing. Presumably the spores manage to escape before they are destroyed. There is more about inkcaps (and how to make ink) in a previous post here.