“Carry your camera everywhere” is common advice to new photographers.  You never know when you’ll spot something to snap.

I made the mistake last week of not taking the camera with me on a couple of walks and missed some superb views and today kept my camera in the bag too long to capture something really special. All is not lost though, there were plenty of delights in the forest undergrowth that I snapped to share with you.

The mushroom Amanita muscaria, commonly known as “fly agaric”.  There are simply hundreds in the Kaitoke Forest right now.

I loved the way this one was pushing it’s way up through the pine needles.

There were all shapes and sizes.  Some redder than others.  But all adding a dash of colour to the otherwise green and brown horizon.

Here you can get a sense of the how these are layered into the forest floor.  You can see one peaking in the distance.

Aside from the mushrooms there was one other splendid sight.  I’m afraid photographing it was a little more tricky as it dashed off into the undergrowth before I could get any close up views.  This is a friend of someone I blogged about at the beginning of December.

This time its a peacock wandering along our walking trail.  Just look at the colours of his head.

Here is is in all his glory.  It’s amazing to think we have such a beautiful thing just wandering in the forest.

There was a bit of me that wanted him to strut his stuff and show his full feathers but I didn’t want to alarm him any more than he already was.  The colours were iridescent.  It’s hard to capture them through the layers of undergrowth but you get a sense from this picture of how peacock blue he was.

It doesn’t help of course having two hounds in tow.  MT and I did take it in turns though to have a good gawp at the peacock as it was a truly beautiful thing to see.  All I need now is to work out how to bag this peacock and bring him home to strut on the lawn!