staff notes

starlings are beginning to gather into large flocks, and when they perch on a stave of telegraph wire look like Elizabethan lute music notation.

last of the summer wine 3

and a late red admiral basking in the unusually warm October sun, showing the amazing complexity and subtle colouring of its underwings.

last of the summer wine 2

this is a stinkhorn, usually smelled rather than seen, but this was a very fresh and especially pungent specimen. It spreads its spores by attracting flies which land on the slimy sticky tip and carry the spores away.

last of the summer wine

this jet black mushroom is a chanterelle known as Horn of Plenty or Black Trumpet, and in France as la viande des pauvres (poor man's meat) where it is used in stews. It is an occasional species found on oak and beech leaf litter (note acorn in top photo). This is the first time it has appeared for four years at this particular spot.

at the Honey fair Callington 3

Kit Hill in the background adding some perspective to the man on stilts

street entertainers for MacMillan nurses

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the handiwork of local primary schoolchildren.

at the Honey fair Callington 2

John Trevithick (under trilby), Lawrence Reed (VIP) and town criers of Bodmin and Launceston.

the loudest guy on the street (from Saltash of course).

and the town criers of Callington, Saltash, Newton Abbot, Crewkerne, Torbay, Bodmin, Ilfracombe and Barnstaple