With the heat…we have fungus, amongus! Ha!
It’s always exciting to see something new, a bird, a bug, or anything growing! With the heat and rain, we have a bounty of wild and crazy fungus popping up in all directions along the road. I’ve gotten a bit braver, or one could say foolhardy and gone “F*ck it! I’ll brave the ticks to see this cool stuff!” Ha!
OK, these were completely new to me! I was a bit confused at first as they are so different, well, they are! The yellow ones are Orange Earthtongue-Microglossum rufum…how can you not love that name. The red shafted ones are, I think, Goblet Waxcap .
I decided to go back after finding these to check on them. I gathered up my kneeling cushion, to get down to earth level as close as possible, and my LED flashlight, it works like a flash and headed off down the road to see what else I could find!
Cool Coral-like fungi, and slime molds! Hey, it doesn’t get any better than this! I could get down to eye level with my shorter lens and try with the small handheld LED flashlight to get more details!
I also love to check back on mushrooms to see how they are changing from day to day!
I check in stumps, and downed logs. I look under pines, I basically am just fixated on the ground. I probably walked by a few birds that were going “Hey! Lady! Up here!” Ha!
How could you miss these guys and that bright yellow! Or something called “Funeral Bell” !? My Id’s come from iNaturalist and my very patient mushroom savy friends who kindly point things out, like “Turn it OVER and take a picture of the underside!” I can’t pull them out! Ha! Unless there is ALOT of them!
Then there are my favourites…;) Ha! Dead Man’s fingers…
Did you know there are “Fairy Fingers” as well, better than Dead Kid’s fingers right? 0_0!…and Ghost Pipes? 🙂
I will look under downed trees as well to see what’s there! One spot had hundreds of 1/4″ mushrooms growing on the underside. I’ll go back to check on them. Sometimes, in a day, they are gone!
I love seeing something new! Colours, shapes, you name it!
Wolf’s Milk and Jellied False Coral Fungus? Who gets to name these guys? Ha! After an hour of crawling around on my knees and getting up and down several hundred times, at least it felt like it, I’d had my exercise for the day!
Ok, it wasn’t ALL mushrooms:) I had a few htichhikers! A Summer Fishfly kept trying to catch a ride on my sleeve! I did manage to finally set it down on a leaf!
I had to step over a few Leopard Frogs and Garter snakes that quickly slithered away! Not sure what the slime was, a friend suggested a deceased spotted salamander (?) but the large Carpenter ants were very interested!
Along the road I did run into a few butterflies. It has been SO quiet. I’m hoping they are just late, it is worrisome, including the lack of deer flies attacking me!
A bush with bright orange berries caught my eye, as well as some beautiful mosses!
On the way back, Mike stopped to pick me up, rescued from the emerging deer flies in the heat. We came across a very large Gray Ratsnake blocking the road…I had to shoo it off our driveway, sunbathing. 5′ plus of lazing snake that really, really didn’t want to go anywhere! I had to get a stick at one point and try to pick her up as she was NOT going to budge. I was hissed at, and had a few attempted bites/stikes to the stick I was holding before she slowly, grudgingly moved off the road. I ruined her sunbath! What a beauty! She was rearing up like a cobra as I attempted to convince her to move along! Muy bravo!
I’ll catch up with the road dragonflies and flowers and the new local soap opera, not “The Days of our Lives”, more like “The bugs of the day” or “The Young and the Flying of the Milkweed bush” or “Green Crawling Creatures”..beginning to sound more like a horror film! Ha! I’ll leave you with this beauty, eating and watching by the swamp:)
