Hey, mom, what is this thing?

Hey, mom, what is this thing?

It's a puffball, Baby Dog.

A ball?  Toss it, please!  Pretty please!  I wanna play with the ball!

No, Baby Dog. It's not that kind of ball.

No?  Since when can't we play ball?  Was I bad?

No, you aren't bad.  It's a ball that won't bounce and won't roll.

What the heck kind of a ball is that? 

It's a fungus.

Doesn't seem like a lot of fun to me if I can't play with it.  And who's Gus?

There is no Gus.

How come Gus is having all the fun?

There is no Gus.

You're getting me a brother, aren't you? I don't like brothers.  Wait!  Does Gus bring the fun?  Can I play with the ball when Gus comes?

There is no Gus. You are not getting a brother.

You're going to let me play with the ball after I pose for this photo, aren't you?

It's not that kind of ball. (sigh)

(Sigh)

Odds and ends

The weather is unseasonably mild, or at least it has been over the long Thanksgiving holiday. Even on Roundtop, where the temperature is nearly always 4-5 degrees cooler than down in the towns, the temperature hovered near 60 degrees. I took advantage of it to do some more cleaning of the brush and tree tops that came down during the October snowstorm. Mostly, I’m just dragging what I can further into the woods. Most of it is too heavy to load into my car. As long as I don’t have snow on the ground, this is a project I can work on all winter.

Yesterday afternoon, I sat outside on my deck, facing the sun’s warmth, comfortable without a jacket. The woods was quiet, except for when a blue jay or the crows split the silence. I doubt I’ll be able to do that again until spring, at least not without a jacket. Since the snowstorm, the weather has been unseasonably mild, and I know I’ve thought a few times that “today” would be the last time only to find out there was another “today” or two left in the season.

Today in Pennsylvania is the first day of rifle deer season. A couple of trucks edged slowly up the mountain past my cabin just before 6 a.m., setting the dogs to barking though even on a good day they don’t need much of an excuse to start that. Later on, when it was light, I heard a few shots, though none were close enough to be the hunters I saw.

I did see a total of 8 deer this morning, none with antlers. Three of them were the doe and twins that hang out around my cabin. The others were in two groups, racing across the road in front of me, no doubt spooked out of their beds by the unfamiliar presence of hunters. It was a reminder to me that the deer will now be on the move to avoid hunters and can appear anywhere and at anytime as a result.

While I was cleaning up the brush this weekend, I started noticing all the fungus on other pieces of downed branches. November is a good time to see fungus—the leaves are down and no underbrush obscures the view. And, truth be told, there aren’t many exciting birds left around the mountain or any wildflowers, so November is the time when there’s not too much else to look at either. Still, I like the textures and patterns on them so I don’t mind if they aren’t as exciting as a wild geranium or an American redstart.

The first photo is, I believe, the turkey tail fungus, though it’s still small compared to other turkey tail fungus I’ve seen. The colored bands that mark the growth of the fungus are supposed to resemble the bands on a turkey’s tail. The orange fungus might be sulfur shelf, also known as chicken of the woods, but I’m not sure because it’s still much smaller than others I’ve seen, at least so far. I’ll have to keep an eye on them and see if they grow.  

November foray

Now that the leaves have dropped, the brown shades of winter dominate the forest, even if the temperatures of winter have yet to arrive. This time of year can be challenging to photograph because the landscape is something of a monochrome. October brings such a riot of color that the sudden change to brown can be something of a shock.

This weekend the quiet that has pervaded November 2010 continued, so I was eager to get outside. Temperatures this November are about typical, but unlike many Novembers that produce a variety of precipitation, this one hasn’t done much of that so far. In other words, this has been an excellent November to be out and about and not huddled around a fire.

The sameness of the color of my local landscape drives me to look for things that are not brown, and that search usually finds me looking at fungus and moss. This weekend I found lichen and fungus and moss in abundance, so for the moment I happily have something to photograph.

The moss I found looked like a tiny little field of ferns, nature’s own miniature landscape.

The fungus covered the west side of this tree with ribbons of tiny, white polka dots of fungus.

Lichen is a favorite of mine. It is sensitive to air pollution of nearly any kind, so when I see a nice healthy patch of it on a rock or a tree trunk, I know I’m in a healthy forest.

So the leaves have fallen, the forest has turned brown, and the deer are taking on their duller winter coats. Can snow be far behind? Probably not.

Fungus weather

Tomorrow will be the day. Tomorrow will be sunny and warm, and a few hours of that will be all that’s needed for the first “new green” something to appear. Yesterday the rain finally stopped, except for an evening shower that I ignored. Still, the gloomy overcast remained all day, dark enough so that the entire afternoon seemed like a long twilight.

Last evening I wandered around the cabin, hoping to find something that was “new green.” It didn’t happen. I carefully examined the patches of moss but even the moss has the look of something that’s been through a rough spell. Being covered by four feet of snow can do that, even to the best moss.

It is still soggy here and still squishy, though I don’t seem to be slurping when I walk in the woods anymore. I’m calling that progress.

I half-expected to hear a phoebe this morning but that didn’t happen either. The time is right, and a full day of sunshine to fly north might be enough to bring them. I think tomorrow will be the day for that, too.

Small surprises

My foray into the valley between Roundtop and Nell’s Hill this past Sunday produced a couple of interesting finds. Do you know what this photo is of? It’s an exploded puffball fungus. I’ve never noticed one post-explosion before. During the summer the camp kids were excited to see the "green smoke" of spores that spouted whenever I tapped one with my hiking stick. This one is not only post-explosion, it’s likely also in the decaying mode. I found it interesting to see what they look like when they are fully exploded.

The second interesting thing is the little plant in today’s second photo. I just liked the pattern on its leaves and figured it was something interesting but didn’t know what it was. Digital photography is a great help for identifications of anything. This little plant is actually an orchid—a downy rattlesnake orchid. It’s also commonly known as downy rattlesnake plantain, but that name is a misnomer as it’s not a plantain.

It blooms from mid-July to September and the flowers aren’t very showy, at least not in the way a lady’s slipper or fringed gentian is showy. Perhaps that explains why I didn’t notice any blooms when I was walking with the kids down here well into late July. Or perhaps this little plant didn’t bloom until August or September and I simply missed it. Or perhaps it didn’t bloom at all this year. Most of the photos I saw of the plant showed several more leaves and seemed to be at least slightly larger than this tiny version. Notice also a second, even tinier plant with just two leaves to the left of this larger one.

The downy rattlesnake is known for growing out of moss, as this one is, and likes moisture. This past summer was both wet and cool—likely ideal growing conditions for it but who knows what next summer will bring? Perhaps this was the first year for it. I hope I can see it blooming next summer. I plan to be looking for it, in any event.

Happy Friday

I think the tree fungus in today’s photo is false turkey tail, but please don’t hold me to that. Every time I think I’m improving my fungus-identification skills, I find another 20 species that seem to fit just as well. Not only is my learning curve on these things steep, but I’m starting to think it’s approaching hopeless.

I enjoy looking at and for woodland fungus, but you should probably take my poor attempts at identification with a grain of salt. Maybe I should just stick to birds. I’m pretty good with those.

A good many birders I know bemoan the days of winter birding as unexciting, but I don’t agree. It’s true that this time of year it’s difficult to find, say, 50 species of birds in a few hours of birding, but I find other compensations. This is a good time of year to spend more time watching the birds do what they do.

In May, it’s easy to get caught up trying to find that next good bird than it is to think about spending much time with something as common as a song sparrow. In November, the odds finding unusual birds are much higher, so you might as well pay more attention to the ones around the yard.

And if you are a new birder, now is the perfect time for birding. Spend some time getting to know the local and common birds so that when May or April comes around, you can focus on the visitors.

For me, winter birding is pleasurable because my view into the forest is now unrestricted by greenery. The birds are no longer just a brief flit between leaves. I can actually see them and watch what they’re going. I guess this is all just by way of saying that I’m ready for Saturday when I can spend a few hours in daylight fooling around and looking for birds. Happy Friday!

An evening in spring

The recent rain on Roundtop has finally booted the ferns into action, and is likely responsible for helping this morel along too. I found it growing in my front forest last evening, camouflaged so nicely that I almost missed it.

The change from tinderbox to reasonably well-watered forest also brought a common garden toad into my driveway last evening, much to Dog’s delight. Dog knows well enough to keep his mouth shut around toads, but he can’t avoid nosing them when they jump. That’s simply too tempting.

Last evening the forest was filled with the usual after-dark noises—a great horned owl down in the valley, a wood thrush that simply couldn’t settle for long after the sun was down, a deer stepping delicately if not silently across the leaves. The usual noises of a woodland night are ones I find comforting and relaxing. I sit outside in the warm evening. The darkness veils my sight and I focus instead on the sounds that tell much. The woods sound at peace, and I go back inside.

Sunday at the Cabin

When this odd-looking fungus first poked its head up just off my driveway, I thought it was going to be a morel. It's not, though I sure don't know what it is. It's already turned to jelly, so whatever it was, it is no longer. Any ID thoughts will be much appreciated.

Birds, especially warblers, continue to move through around the cabin. I don't have enough of them to describe it as a wave of warblers, a wavelet is more like it. Yesterday, I added red-eyed vireo and redstart to the list. Likely there were more.

Up until an hour ago, it was foggy here, which adds another layer of difficulty to identifying the tiny flits of warblers as they move from where-I-didn't-know-they-were to where-I-can't-see-them. The only time they are usually visible is in the moment they are flying. They are usually gone by the time I get my binoculars on them.

I hear many birds in the woods right now, and my hearing has never been the best. though I can differentiate many warbler songs on CD, when I'm in the woods, with 12 different species of various birds all "yelling" at once, the warblers all soon sound alike to me. It's a bit like being in a crowded bar and trying to figure out the conversation of the person next to you. If I catch every other word, I'm lucky. Same with warblers.

The fog is clearing now, and the clouds are moving out too. It's too nice outside to stay inside any longer.

Turkey Tail

For those of you who were hoping I'd soon be off my fungus obsession, my apologies. This weekend I set out into the woods with a most sincere intention of finding something to photograph that was not a fungus.

My first thought was that I'd find a landscape angle that appealed to me, but the lighting wasn't great, the sky was overcast, and the forest is in that pre-spring brown that I am not at the moment finding appealing. In other words, that didn't work. Then I was taken by the texture of bark on different trees and tried a few bark photographs, which sounds like a good idea in principle but the results didn't match my image of how these photographs should look.

And then, there it was. I was lost (and I don't mean in *that* sense). Before you knew it, I was taking more photos of fungus. Right in front of my toes while I was trying and failing to photograph bark was this magificent log with fungus all over it. Today, for a change, my photo is of one that I'm reasonably sure of the identification. It's a Turkey Tail! The latin name is trametes versicolor.

Turkey Tail is one of the fungus that's known as a winter fungus, though you can find this common polypore in all seasons. Turkey Tail was one of the first fungi to provide a modern drug for cancer treatment, which is just one more reason, as if readers of this blog will need one more, to preserve forests and their diversity. It's described as edible and healthful, but too tough to eat though it can be boiled for tea or soup stock.

I should warn my readers that this is not the only fungus I found in this spot over the weekend, though I do promise that once I'm through posting this next batch of fungus, I will look for something else to photograph.

Tomorrow: More identification woes (and a few reasons why. I think)

Frustrating Fungus

Once again, my eye was taken with a fungus or mushroom I found in the forest, and once again I am frustrated with my inability to be confident of an identification. I think this is the early stage of the jack-o-lantern fungus, but I sure wouldn't bet a paycheck on it. If I'm right, this thing is pretty poisonous. In later stages of the jack-o-lantern's development, the rounded portion flattens out to some extent. I guess my only solution is to go back to the same spot and see how it looks on my next visit, not that that's a hardship assignment.

In non-mushroom activity: spring continues to arrive, sneaking in on little birds wings at night. I'm always surprised, and by this time I probably shouldn't be, by the number of birds I see at night. Even when it's not a migration season, I commonly see or startle birds on my evening walks. For a while, I thought the lights at Roundtop confused the birds into thinking it wasn't night, but as the years have gone on, I've decided that it's the lights at Roundtop that allow me to see what the birds are doing during the dark hours.

For example: last night around 9 p.m. I heard two house finches singing happily. I saw a small flock of Tundra swans inexplicably heading south--who knows what they were up to? A large flock of robins appeared out of the south, flew over the mountain and settled not far from my feet. I saw a few juncos and several unidentified sparrow-sized birds flitting around the bottom of several conifers.

This morning the robins were all singing away, and spring's dawn chorus is getting louder and more prolonged with each morning that passes. But I think I'm going to give up on mushrooms for a while--at least until my new mushroom book arrives, the one my fantasies imagine will make identifications a snap!

Fox and Fungi

I never thought I'd say this, but I guess even I’m ready for spring. I groaned at the sight of snow squalls this morning and am starting to be jealous when other nature bloggers around the country wax poetic about spring flowers and butterflies—none of which have appeared here at Roundtop yet. This is just what a 40° drop in temperature in 24 hours will do to me.

The suddenly cooler weather does not seem to matter to the dogs. I made the mistake this morning of not putting on a jacket when I took Baby Dog outside, figuring a sweatshirt would be good enough. So the wind kicks up, and I’m suddenly cold. Baby Dog was taking forever to find the proper spot to complete her assignment so we can go back inside. Just when I thought she was going to oblige, some smell distracted her, and she forgot why she was out there in the first place. The spot needed to be smelled, extensively, and this was far more important than any bodily function.

Dog and I heard a fox calling last night. It was close enough to the cabin to pique Dog’s interest and make me wonder what the wild little canine was up to. The fox call is a single bark that is repeated over and over. When Baby Dog heard it her hackles went up, and she started to bark too. Here's a link to a site with fox calls on it. Check out the one called call.wav. That's what we heard last night. It's kind of a spooky sound when it's 10:30 p.m. and no more than 50-75 yards away. At least Baby Dog thought so. Dog was interested enough for his ears to perk up, but he wasn't about to start barking back at it.

My photo today is simply a downed tree with a lot of neat fungus on it. I love the bright red fungus in the middle. It is the most colorful thing in the woods right now.