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| Panther Amanita, Mt. Tamalpais |
Taking a slow stroll down the Cataract Trail from Rock Spring yesterday, my wife and I remarked on all the mushrooms we were seeing (most of which had been picked or kicked over the weekend). We hadn't seen such a profusion in quite a few years, thanks to an early start to the rainy season. I wasn't sure I was going to post anything since I'd only brought my compact camera and didn't feel like my snapshots had done justice to the bounty.
There was another guy up there photoraphing the mushrooms, and we tipped him off to the panther at the top of this post. He soon passed us on the trail and we didn't run into him again. However, higher up the trail we spotted a chanterelle that had been left in the open (and which hadn't been there on the way down), and I wondered if he had reciprocated. There were quite a few more undisturbed chanterelles growing nearby. Some years I don't see chanterelles at all, and I wondered if they only come out when we get those good October rains.
My wife suggested a good read that I'd like to pass along, called Raising Hare: A Memoir, by Chloe Dalton. The author is great at describing her detailed observations of the tiny hare she adopts from the wild, and which opens her up to a whole world of nature she had not previously appreciated.
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| There were a couple of patches of witch's hat mushrooms, a species I don't find every year along Cataract Creek. |
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| It was also good to find lots of Mycena groups like these. |
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| A lot of the sulfur tuft mushrooms we found along the trail were old, but some huge logs at Laurel Dell were so chockablock with them that there were old and new ones growing together. |
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| This looks to be a later phase of the Onnia I photographed in early October, when they looked more like bread sticks. |
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| Right around the corner from the Onnia, and part of the same fallen Doug fir, was this beautiful display of swirling wood grain. |
Upper Cataract Falls
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| Most of the canyon maple leaves were off the trees and on the ground. |
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| The newt tried to escape when it saw me but quickly ran into a dead end. It stopped like this, like a perp in a cop show waiting to be frisked. |
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| Sunlight etched its way through the cloud cover to create a dazzling light show on the Pacific Ocean. |
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| From the light-show vantage point I also spotted this group of wild turkeys enjoying a flat patch of ground. I thought they might start a display dance, but they were more interested in pecking for food. |
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