I TOOK a walk down near Hessenford beside the River Seaton and one of the first things I photographed was a Fly agaric – Amanita muscaria – mushroom.

This is one of the most easily recognised mushrooms that appear under trees during Autumn. A poisonous fungus that because of its white spotted red cap was considered pretty enough to be used in children’s story books about pixies and fairies.

However, it has been said that back in the days when Vikings made numerous pillaging visits to Britain, Scandinavian women would pick these mushrooms so they could be chewed by the Vikings ‘warriors’ as they made their way across the North Sea.

The hallucinatory properties of the fungi made them feel much braver as they attacked unsuspecting farm workers in the fields.

It must be said that a cousin of this mushroom, the Amanita phalloides commonly called the Death Cap, is the most poisonous mushroom in the world. I once read a story about 31 children dying after eating this fungus at a mushroom feast in Poland in 1918. Why are some people so stupid that they will eat anything that grows?

There were some Hawthorn bushes beside the river and one of them had some Yellow brain fungus growing on the thin, mossy trunk. This fungus grows all year but its golden-yellow fruit body is most frequently spotted during late Autumn.

Along the edge of the riverbank were some white flowered dead-nettles out in bloom. A rather silly name for these plants really as they are not dead, but the word is used to signify that their leaves do not have those nasty stinging hairs on the underside like the common nettle – which is no relation.

There were once some dwelling houses beside the river on the edge of the woodland and I spotted some white Snowberries out in bloom. I think this shrub must have been planted in the garden of one of these old houses and the berries, which really stand out on the low hedge, will persist throughout the Winter but very few of them contain fertile seeds.

Back home, I was giving the border around the lawn a good weeding when I noticed a ladybird crawling along a Foxglove leaf.

I quickly collected my camera from inside the back door and managed to get a few pictures before it opened its wings and flew away.

It was a Harlequin ladybird. These arrived from Asia during 2004 and have spread all over the country.

Whilst I was kneeling and weeding, a squirrel passed me by with its sudden, quick movements. I had collected lots of hazel nuts as they fell from the trees and most days I throw a handful of them, with a couple of walnuts, onto the lawn.

Well, I still had the camera to hand and snapped him as he picked up a nut to bury for future consumption.

I often find small nut trees growing in plant pots because the squirrels sometimes forget where they have hidden them.