Last week I bemoaned the lack of fungi in my new garden.
So what then happens? Barely a couple of days later, I was probing deep under the canopy of a Holm Oak and found about five mushroom-type toadstools, big ones, the size of a saucer. Excellent - my garden isn't quite the fungal desert I thought it was.
I must photograph those, I thought, so I came back the next day with my camera and they were gone! You ought to have felt the wave of confusion that came over me. Had I dreamt it? After all, I awoke the night-before-last thinking there was a Hedgehog moving about on my pillow.
But, no, I was sure they had been there. As I looked more closely, I realised that something else had taken a shine to my toadstools. Look closely at the photo and you can make out little bits of the cap while top right is the uneaten 'stalk' sat on a leaf, technically called the 'stipe'.
It's always good to play the nature detective, but on this occasion there weren't many suspects to consider. Badgers are fungi foragers but I have yet to see any evidence of them in the garden. Hedgehogs aren't particularly prone to mushroom munching. Wood Mice and other rodents might have a nibble but wouldn't polish off giant toadstools in this way. So the finger is pointed firmly at my Foxes.
It was a reminder that in creating a garden that offers food for wildlife, it is easy to think of nectar and pollen for bees and berries for birds, but much of the rest of nature's harvest, from leaves to wood and from roots to fungi are all on the menu for different creatures.
I always get mine in quick! A wood blewit appeared yesterday near my compost heap, and was quickly snaffled, very tasty, yum!
The good news is we have both badgers, foxes and fungi. It seems they are very picky over which ones they will and will not eat. Our garden is full of fungi, although all the ones I would eat disappear in the blink of an eye, leaving behind the poisonous and the ones which don't look edible at all.
Following on from last weeks blog, perhaps your lack of fungi in your garden is down to the previous owners. They not only appear on the bark-chip, leaf mould, compost and amongst the grass in my garden but they are popping up on gravel paths and even on the trunk of my tree fern.