Since writing my blog update a couple of days ago, I have been to a well known site in Southern England looking for more fungi to photograph.  I went to a birch woodland which is well known for its fungi, the target was one of the easiest to recognise and identify of our British fungi, the Fly Agaric.  Allthough the colours can varry between yellowy orange through to a very dark red depending on age, soil type, light, etc. there is no mistaking this fungi.

I had been to this site a few weeks ago and there were no fungi to be seen, but on yesterdays visit there were huge numbers of this colourful fungi covering many patches of the forest floor.  In a few weeks they had risen from the ground and already the large majority were past their best.  But I managed to get a few images of this brightly coloured but poisionous species.

One thing that surprised me was the size of some of the fungi, Fly Agaric can normally be found anything from a couple of inches in diameter up to about 8 inches.  I am not exaggerating to say that there were several thousand Fly Agarics and that a large number of these were over a foot in diameter.

To give an indication of size, below is an image which I took looking straight down onto one of these Agarics which shows my Wellington boots and one of the Agarics.  On my right boot is a 20p coin.  Together this shows just how large these were.