The undersurface is brighter and redder.

Unlike the short-lived mushrooms and toadstools, the scarlet bracket can be found year-round, but it is much brighter and more obvious when refreshed by rain in the cooler, damper months. In summer it becomes drier and duller.

This is a common and very widespread fungus, occurring all over Australia, from damp fern gullies to semi-desert situations. Very few other fungi can match that distribution. In the Ballarat district it is common on fallen pine branches, where it performs a valuable role in breaking them down.

It is thought to be able to out-compete some other species of fungi.

The stemless, fan-shaped brackets are attached to the wood along a straight edge. Adding to their attraction, they usually occur in groups, rather than alone. Specimens are sometimes seen with concentric darker or lighter rings or paler edges.

The size of the scarlet bracket fungus varies, but the orange fans are usually 30-60 millimetres wide.

As with most bracket fungi, the bright scarlet undersurface has tiny pores, rather than the gills of many other fungi.

A couple of pelicans were seen last weekend at Lake Wendouree, despite their apparent absence at Lake Burrumbeet.

Also at Lake Wendouree have been a great egret, a few blue-billed ducks, a pair of Cape Barren geese and six magpie geese. The geese were sighted on the central mud islands.

There were more than two dozen magpie geese seen there in the summer, but numbers seem to have now reduced. Perhaps there are extras hiding in the reeds.

There are very few white ibises at present, compared to other years.

Their slightly late arrival could be due to the cold weather, or it could indicate that the usual large noisy numbers will not return this year. We shall have to wait and see what happens in the next two or three weeks.

How long has the native rakali or water-rat been living in Victoria Park's ponds? A sighting this week of a juvenile eating seeds and oats may be the first.

Rakali are quite capable of overland travel, which they undertake at night.

The juvenile may have been driven from occupied territories at Lake Wendouree, causing it to disperse, assisted by the long winter nights.

This seems to be something that might once have grown, but it also looks a bit like litter. It was along the Yarrowee Trail, where it seemed to be embedded in the ground.

D.J., Brown Hill.

This is the remains of an earth-star fungus; it has lost its central "puffball" section, and its "rays" have flattened with age and rain.

The earth-star commences as an egg-shaped object that soon splits into the neat, clean-cut, leathery, triangular rays of the "star".

Our common local earth-stars mostly have five rays, sometimes six, rarely seven.

Other species have up to 12, with some having a few forked rays.

The powdery spores are enclosed in the globular puffball sac, which in this case has opened, dispersed its spores and then detached and blown away.

Earth-stars are found in bushland and in gardens, on bush litter and in grass.