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| Lepiota with Madrone Bark |
I know I've had a good tramp in the woods when I emerge with wet and muddy knees, and my hands and clothes are covered with urushiol and tetrodotoxin....
Okay, hopefully not covered with poison oak and newt toxins. But I did think it prudent, as soon as I got home, to get my pants in the hamper and my body in the shower.
I used my post-holiday laziness as an excuse to drive up to Mt. Tam this morning (instead of biking) to swap out the SD cards in my trail cameras, then spent a couple of hours of poking around the woods with the DSLR.
The bear's head fungus en route to the trail cams continues to grow and expand its territory with new fruitings. My first blue hound's-tongue flowers of the season were just beginning to bloom on a lone plant along an animal trail. I also surprised several turkeys and a group of deer while trekking quietly over the soggy forest duff. It's only been a week since I last swapped out the trail cam cards, but I moved one of the cams to a new spot and wanted to see if it was catching anything.
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| Witch's Butter Parasitizing False Turkey Tail |
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| Mossy Fellers |
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Botanical Still Life
(Hopefully you can view these full-sized instead of on some teensy phone screen.) |
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| Mushroom with Lichen & Madrone Bark |
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| Jack-O-Lantern on a Mossy Trunk |
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| A little Mycena sprouting from the base of a Doug fir tree. |
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| I picture the witch's butter mycelium parasitizing the Stereum hirsutum (tiny bracket fungi in the upper left) and then kind of barfing forth this fat, gelatinous mass of orange reproductive goodness. What a life.... |
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| Madrone Couture |
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| This poor little guy was about to duck into a hole when I snatched him up and put him on this log full of poor man's licorice. He remained constantly on the move, and I had to pick him up several times while I tried to change the lens on my DSLR, set a flash exposure, and get the shot before he got away. |
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| I took this phone snap of the log covered with poor man's licorice (Bulgaria inquinans) before I saw the newt. You can see the still-unmolested salamander about half-way up the right side of the frame. |
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| White slime mold sporangia (possibly Didymium spongiosum) sprouting from a wafer of wood that I placed on a mossy tree trunk with a couple of fortuitously placed tiny mushrooms growing on it. |
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| This is a composite of several frames from a video clip of a bobcat crossing the bottom of the frame. Interesting how the color of its fur changed so radically. |
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