Mushroom Monday - Sad Finds

Here are a few sad finds for this #mushroommonday

From a distance I saw some orange, like a pumpkin color. I thought maybe perhaps I found chicken of the woods again...

But sadly these are the poisonous lookalike called jackolantern mushrooms. For beginners they only resemble chicken of the woods by color, but jackolanterns have gills and stems compared to the polypore nature of chicken which has neither. A few people per year get poisoned eating these things and they are not deadly but require a stomach pump because they cause such havoc on your guts.

It has been dry this indian summer and these plump polypores are all dehydrated and are falling off the trees.

I am not quite sure the species of these types, they look nice and white when starting out but dry out fast and turn black then fall off the tree quickly.

Sadly no more mushrooms to show, but I do have this large grass spider to show. Halloween is coming and the spiders are decorating for fall everywhere.

I also have this poor toad getting eaten by a medium sized garter snake. I filmed a bit of the action and I think this toad probably got away. These skirmishes last forever until one of the parties finally gives up. It finally rained today so hopefully I'll have something better for next week. That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)