No, this is not a tale about a meal in a French restaurant. The other day as I walked along the grassland by the Solway Coast near Flimby I noticed that there were a lot of squashed small snail shells, and off to the side were many identical snails that had managed to avoid being trodden on. Knowing absolutely nothing at all about snails I though it was time to learn something so took a photograph of one of them.
What was this snail?
I thought that I had a book about slugs and snails but can’t find it, so presumably it was one that I intended to get but never did. Does anyone here know what it is? If so it would be good to leave a message in the Comment box below.
A minute or two later I spotted what at first I thought was another kind of snail. It appeared to be suspended in mid-air on a few blades of grass.
It didn’t take more than a few seconds for me to realise that this was no snail, but probably a mushroom. But did it have a stalk? The top-down view didn’t give an answer to that question. There was nothing for it but, despite an aching back, to get down on hands and knees, arrange the camera in position at grass level and see whether I could get a reasonable shot. Here it is.
So yes, it has a stalk. But what is it? Once again I don’t have the relevant guidebook. I suppose I could “Ask Google” but I’ve seen so many alleged identifications of birds that point to species not even known on this side of the Atlantic, or unique to China or somewhere else remote, that I really don’t trust online ID. Maybe there’s a mushroom expert in the house – I mean on the web site.
Well that’s it for now. Just to say that shortly after this I spotted one of the butterflies that I mentioned in a previous post, a Small White. There were few birds around as the tide was far out, very low, but still it was an interesting walk.
