CORAL FUNGUS.

It's been a quietish week but I have had a couple of outings. On Wednesday I went to the Vape shop and got a new tank and a load of spare coils. I replenished my nicotine liquids and enquired why they only came in little 10ml bottles.........the tank on the machine only holds 2ml. Not enough to last the day out if one is working....A bloody EU dictat apparently. Tobacco roll up stuff now has to be sold in large quantities. Barking mad they are.
This is the problem when you get a country with almost as many government employees as proper folk. There is nobody to phone up and annoy. They can hide behind muzak whilst you wait for the correct idiot or press random numbers. The useless blighters have to justify their time, the only blessing is they don't seem to work too hard or for very long. 
We are getting regular visits from some department of the environment people wittering on about the free range pigs. The pigs are very happy here, farrowing in a bed of bracken of the sows choosing and for the most part looking after themselves. Jock does pop a wee tent over her whilst she suckles her issue, to my mind perfect husbandry. They do dig the ground up......It's what pigs do unless you get the Asian ones which just graze like cows and sheep. The really young ones can escape through the new fencing but do no harm. Little tinkers are the very devil to catch....It could become an Olympic sport to rival beach volleyball. Be much better and the little pigs would love the attention of nubile young ladies. There seems no reason to catch them as they go home on their own come nightfall. It would be good to get some beef cattle but if we had a wet winter and had to fetch them in and then slurry spray.... Then imagine the townies that are frightened of cows. A terrifying beast is a bovine unless it is chopped up and shrink wrapped by someone braver. Viscous things akin to a tiger are cows. They wouldn't hurt anyone unless provoked. I'd be tempted to fire the Vac tank up when the council inspector is inspecting, that would be fun. No CAP Grants here as they are more trouble than they are worth. The government don't like that either but are quite happy to allow Halal slaughter. Horrendous that is but we must be tolerant of Islam and their centuries old habits. Why? We have grown up about time they did or bugger off.
Thursday we drove down to Morcambe, it's a suburb of Lancaster. We came back with a new farm truck, a beautiful Toyota Hi-Lux. Stunning it is. It needs the load bed beefing up a bit so that we can carry a big diesel tank and the odd small excavator bucket and ripper tooth but I'll get some snaps when it's done. Morecambe is about four hours away and it was a long days driving. I ought to work for the government I could have had today off fully paid as flexi-time.

This morning on our wander I noticed some beautiful Coral Fungi. After a breakfast and yet another drool over the new truck I went out and got a few snaps.

I still haven't got my fungus book back so will content myself and you with Coral Fungus. I seem to recall there are at least half a dozen of the things and yellow ones to boot. Not sure that even the book would help. Most of these are edible and Lesley used to know which ones, a proper grown up mycologist. She baked them in a soft Scottish pancake thing one night and I survived. I remember that she cooked them off in butter then rolled all the crap out before incorporating them in the batter. I can remember enjoying them but I was a big fan of hers at the time. Still am but the feeling wasn't mutual. She hated the stink of diesel...I seem to recall I had other faults but had switched off by then. I guess that tuning out was one of them.
Have fun.

SEXTANT.

Not the instrument that used to be an extension of my right arm and told me where I wasn't after twenty minutes spherical trigonometry. This one is much more attractive and is posing on my left hand. The rain has been both continuous and torrential today so as it cleared late afternoon we all went for a wander. Fungi are leaping from the ground and I have a few snaps. Here is the star of the post.

A Sextant Beetle. They wander about sniffing out dead things with the orange bits on the end of their antennae. When they find an ex-mouse, shrew or whatever they crawl underneath and dig until it is buried. Some folk call them Burying Beetles. 

I think this is Nicrophorus vespilloides. Not sure of it's sex so will be a cool, right on left wing Londoner and say it is transgender, Londoners are sexually confused for a reason. It's not a good idea to re-cycle sewage with oestrogen in, then drink it. 
You can often tell male from female insects by looking at their bum, much like humans in fact. I see pincers which in the insect world suggests male but these are small.
 It looks to be under attack from the Mites but these are just hitching a ride to the next corpse. They are phoretic mites and as these are running about on the Beetle I'm going to guess at Poecilochitus carabi. Some types hook on and are stationary like the ones one sees on Harvestmen.
I deleted the last post as having spent a day for no reward being pumped for information by parasitic government employees I had a fall out, cut my losses came back home and cuddled a poorly horse. I couldn't identify the fungi either as my book is still AWOL.
I hope these are Honey Fungus. I have watched them for a couple of days and have never seen so many. They are all over the forest in their thousands. These are shot with the light behind and fill flash from almost head on. 

I'll have another go with an extra strobe and I'll vary the depth of field. Maybe take out all the crap in the foreground. I think a few prints of something on this stamp would be okay for Christmas.