this is how warm 2013 is, it's october and even newts have no thoughts of hibernating just yet. this one was pretty cool about being photographed, but when i breathed on it to see if it was too cold to move, it retreated into the log not to be seen again. i'm glad we have baby smooth newts around, i'm not sure if i've ever seen them before. we used to get what i thought was this species, which we call vesilisko (water lizard), but which seems, after some online searching, to have been either the elusive rupilisko (scab lizard) or some species unheard of, because the scab one, ie. northern crested newt or scabby newt is supposedly slimy whereas the ones i've seen were almost velvety, only the same dark colour with a red, spotty belly. our cats used to bring them sometimes, long ago, before all the ponds dried out and the cats flew to higher hunting grounds. our neighbour still has a pond so that's probably where this one came from. allow me to squeal "aww, how tiny!"
other little things emerging from decaying matter today were these fungi. on top, scutellinia scutellata or eyelash cup starting out in my compost boat, the yellow one i'm unsure of but it could be calocera cornea. yes, i'd say it is pikkusarvikka, which i can only translate as 'a little horny' which, now that i think of it, makes me wonder about the eyelash cup a little... what kind of blog am i keeping here? i'll be hushed over to 'adult content' soon! or maybe mushroom erotica will hit it big and make me a millionaire after all. here's hoping.
