Backlit gills

With a weather forecast of rain and snow for the following two or three days, there were a couple of places that I thought I had better get to on Saturday, 6 September 2014. (Little did we all know that we were in for two days of heavy snowfall that caused a huge amount of damage to thousands of trees throughout the city.) The first place I wanted to get to was Brown-Lowery, to check if there were any mushrooms. The previous time I went, I had only found a couple of things.

On 6 September, it was a little more rewarding and I found several large clusters of tiny mushrooms growing on tree stumps or at the base of trees and various tiny mushrooms growing in the moss, including the small one in the macro shot above. Also found several patches of bright orange Coral Fungi. Quite a few people were in the park, so I felt safer going a very short way in. Far enough, as it turned out, to watch an adult and a juvenile Three-toed Woodpecker, feeding together on a tree trunk. The young one was copying Mom or Dad, but its soft squeaking sound resulted in the adult feeding it, too. This Woodpecker species seems to be reasonably tolerant of people. They are rare birds here, so I feel very lucky to have seen these two and any others in the past.

Since that day, I called in at Brown-Lowery just one more time, to check how much snow was on the ground from our two snowstorms on 9 and 10 September. Stood in the muddy parking lot and peered through the trees. Lots of snow, unfortunately, so all plants and mushrooms were buried beneath a blanket of white. I don't think it's worth checking again, so all I can do is hope that maybe next year will be better.