Crickets and Fungi of the rotten logs of Robertson.

Here is a large Cricket with thick legs. All I can work out is that there is a creature called a "Thick-legged Raspy Cricket", but I can find no images of it, nor any details of where it comes from, what it does, etc. This one was a bit scary, for I know that Crickets like this have huge mandibles (chewing jaws). Its legs were very spiny. In general shape it resembles the Illawarra Raspy Cricket which I have shown before, but this one was bigger and wilder looking, with its powerful orange thighs.

Thanks to Dave Rentz, retired CSIRO entomologist, and Blogger from Kuranda in Queensland, I now know that this wonderful creature is an "Australian King Cricket" Australostoma opacum (Brunner). Dave told me what I had already surmised that these guys can give a nasty bite (remember I had seen their "cousins" up close previously). Also they can exude a nasty cocktail of pungent chemicals from their posterior, as part of a defence mechanism. For me, the entire appearance and build of the creature gave me enough warning signals to know to be wary of it, anyway.

This is a fine example of "Icicle Fungi" hanging on the rotten log.These Olive Cups looked to me like a form of Lichen, at first.
But then I realised that in their smaller stages, they looked like a form of Cup Fungus.
Note the tiny one on the right - that stem looks like a classic Cup FungusThis I have seen before, and it is known as a "Pretzel Fungus".
These tiny stemless fungi were hanging from the underside of a rotting log.
From below you can see that they are a form of Gilled Fungus.
This small, but perfectly formed gilled fungus, showing an "annulus" ring on the stem.
It is possibly a Hygrocybe, but that is a wild guess on my part.
It cap was only about the size of a 10 cent coin.
These near perfect tiny Fungi were growing as a pair on the rotten log.
Note the myriad white fibres growing from the base of the stem.
Here is the inside view of the cap of another one of these fungi
which was accidentally broken.
You can see the long white gills.This was a lovely clump of lilac-mauve small Fungi
growing out of rotted wood fibres at the base of a fallen tree trunk.From the underside, you can see the white gills of these pretty lilac fungi.Here is a single "Puff Ball" which we found while on our Millipede Search.