Hamilton Wetlands and Forest

  23 October A chilly but very rewarding visit to the Forest and Wetlands. Fungi are still abundant.  Many of those we saw last week have grown and changed their shapes. The white spindles, or fairy fingers, have grown longer and increased in numbers. Stems can grow to position the cap of the mushroom into light. The stump on which we've been tracking woodpecker work continues to shrink but has acquired more fungi this past week. I'd never appreciated the beauty of mushrooms until now, but the abundance and variety that appeared here this season is remarkable and often quite lovely. This photo is a bit larger than life-size.  These two  tiny mushrooms struck us with their delicate lavender shading.    In addition to fungi, the forest luxuriates in mosses. The marsh has changed this past week.  After the past week's rains, there are now expanses of open water. Last week, we saw many long filaments of cobweb blowing about--nothing I could photograph.  This week the cobwebs ap

  Sunday in the Wetlands and Forest.  A day of multitudinous  mushrooms and (to alliterate again) what my Dad used to call a "marsh hawk."  These days, more correctly, if not alliterative, a female northern harrier.   The forest has an abundance of mushrooms this year.  I'll pick some this coming Friday for the annual Arrowsmith Naturalists' Mushroom and Nature Festival, and try to include photos to show where my harvest was growing.  Hopefully, after the Festival, I'll be more able to identify what I'm photographing.   For now, a sampling: They grow in a variety of settings: This bracket fungus emerges from a dead, mossy alder. A stand of beautiful mushrooms emerging among oregon grape and trailing blackberry. A cluster of saprophytic* mushrooms emerging from a dead stump. Possibly staghorn jelly fungus? The spectacular and lethal fly amanita, or fly agaric, growing in kinnikinnik. * saprophytes: organisms that feed on a variety of dead organic matter. --- Me

 OH DAMN!  I aimed my camera at the remains of the hornet nest, only to  read "No memory card" in the viewfinder.   I'd obviously left it in my laptop at home.  And that's why the photos on this blog will all be low-res, taken by my smartphone.  Not only is there no memory card in my camera, there seems to be precious little memory in my brain, these days.   The cat-tail moss on the cedars has grown to be very long, and gleams in the morning light.  I was sure that there was going to be a spectacular rarity flying over and me with no functional camera.   The good news was that we didn't see any birds over the marsh, and that the most interesting sightings were of mushrooms.   Unlike birds, they sit still and are relatively easy to photograph.  There were a lot of them, mostly rather small, but often clustered and numerous. I'm sending photos to our fungus expert in preparation for the annual Arrowsmith Naturalists Mushroom Festival, and should get some identif

At last, it's truly autumn.  Rainy days are followed by sparkling light, and crisp air.  The Forest and Wetlands are enlivened by returning birds, and smell fresh. The morning light gleams through the forest. A spider web is illumined.  Still holding the morning's dew, the strands look deceptively dense, but the craft of web-building is unmistakable. The mosses on both living and fallen trees have grown lush and they too, gleam in the forest's light. This stump, the target for woodpeckers since spring, shrinks every week, as they seek out its occupants for their dinners.   As the rains have freshened the forest, fungi emerge from the earth, on downed trees, And on living trees.   The moisture in the forest contrasts with the sinking water level in the marsh. In addition to the water gauge, a close look at this photo will find a damselfly above the marsh.  The dragonfly and damselfly population is shrinking but still active.   Since recent rainfall, there is more open water