Beautiful guttation droplets on a polypore

Tomorrow, 31 August 2018, I plan to join friends out west of the city. Thought I would post tomorrow's photos tonight, so that I am not in such a rush early in the morning. Today, I spent time watching the first memorial service, in Arizona, for Senator John McCain. Some very moving words given by various people.

On 5 August 2018, it was a long weekend here, thanks to a Civic Holiday today (Monday), I was pretty sure that there would be plenty of people at a park SW of the city, so I felt somewhat more confident about going a bit further into the forest. Also, there was a cycle race (?) going on, along the road that runs alongside the park, and there were a few more people in the area - just in case I came across a bear or a cougar!

Mushrooms were what I was looking for, and I found several quite nice ones. Always a treat to come across a polypore that is covered in guttation droplets.

"Some fungi are prone to exhibiting a curious phenomenon—they exude beads of moisture, called guttation. In several polypores, such as Fomitopsis pinicola, the liquid produced can look so much like tears that you'd swear the fungus was weeping. Or maybe sweating. Other species produce pigmented drops that can look like milk, or tar, or even blood."

weirdandwonderfulwildmushrooms.blogspot.ca/2014/08/read-i...

"Guttation, a term used in botany to describe the process by which plants excrete excess water through drops from their leaves. For some mushrooms this is so common that it is a reliable identification feature."

www.fungimag.com/fall-2010-articles/mushroom-weepLR.pdf

On the way home from the park, I stopped to see if any Mountain Bluebirds were still around. The male of one pair looked so dishevelled - I don't remember it being windy. So much work goes into feeding a young family.