15 October

 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.

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Meanwhile, the Marsh:

The sedges have gone from gold to tan.

There is more standing water since the recent rains have brought up the water level.

eBird reports from the Marsh have included a Northern Harrier, but this was the first time we've seen one. 

The female is a very big, reddish raptor.  Harriers are a world-wide genus, of which the Northern Harrier is the only North American species.  Liguori, in his Hawks from Every Angle, notes that they are often associated with short-eared owls, who also hunt in marshland.  Both owls and harriers hunt at least in part by echolocation, and both have flat facial discs which help them hear their prey.  The grey, black, and white male Northern Harrier (sometimes called the "Grey Ghost") is much smaller than the female.

This photo at least gives an idea of the wing span of the bird, and captures the distinctive white rump patch--unique among North American raptors.

Today's sighting taught me a lesson on photographing birds in flight--shooting a bird flying overhead is much easier--there's no conflicting background to confuse the autofocus on my camera.   I'll hope to see this bird again in our visits to the marsh, and adjust my focus accordingly.

It's quite a splendid creature and I'll hope to offer a better likeness on future blogs.