Category: fungi

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 13, 2024 • 8:30 am

Two readers came through with batches of photos, so I think we’re good until Wednesday. If you have good one, well, I can always use them. Thanks!

Today’s photos of fungi come from reader Rik Gern from Austin, Texas.. His notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

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A few weeks ago I sent you some pictures of mushrooms from Copper Falls State Park in Morse, Wisconsin. Here are the rest of the species I observed on that hike.

This lone sentry was at the very beginning of the trail. I wasn’t able to identify it precisely, but it may be from the Rhizopogon family, or maybe not; I had a hard time finding any information that could confirm its identity. On a walk of several miles, this was the only mushroom of it’s kind that I saw.

It would be easy to mistake this fungal cluster for an order of fries abandoned by a careless hiker, but in reality it is Clavariadelphus americanus. I couldn’t find a common name for them, so for now I’ll cal them French fry mushrooms.

They weren’t all grouped so tightly together though; there were a few open patches of pine needles bursting with these odd looking mushrooms:

Late in the hike, as the sun was getting low, these Golden trumpets (Xeromphalina campanella) came into view. According to Wikipedia, “The genus name Xeromphalina means “little dry navel” and campanella means “bell-shaped”, respectively describing the mature and young shapes of the pileus, or cap”. You can see an example of that here with the two smaller mushrooms sporting convex caps while those on the larger mushrooms are starting to go concave.

Golden trumpets like to grow on logs and all of these pictures are from the same fallen tree:

Here is a view of their brownish red stalks.

The black and white picture gives the effect of some large plants growing in an underwater cavern. The lower right hand part of the image has a number of little white dots that look like dust spots on the picture, but when you look closely you can see that they are tiny insects trapped and wrapped up in a spider’s web.

The nearly horizontal rays of the setting sun did a nice job of highlighting the gills of these mushrooms and giving them a majestic look. Once again we can see the downward facing caps on the presumably younger mushrooms on the bottom and the upward arching caps on the older mushrooms on the top.

Links:

Rhizopogon.

Clavariadelphus americanus

Golden trumpet (Xeromphalina campanella)

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 29, 2024 • 8:15 am

Posting may be light today as I have an event to attend. But please send in your photos. I have about two batches left, and today I’m featuring the work of people who sent me only one or a few photos.  Their comments are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

From Lee Jussim

A young muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) dining among pondscum:

Three from Claudia Baker.

On a winter’s walk one day last year, I came across this barred owl (Strix varia) high up in the branches of a tree. Just out there in the bright sunshine, having a snooze, open for anyone to snap a picture. What a beautiful sight. Made my day. The interweb says “originally a bird of the east (where I live), during the twentieth century it spread through the Pacific Northwest and southward to California”. They are fairly prolific around here (Ontario) and, according to a birding friend of mine, they are crowding out the other owls, especially the Barn Owl.

On an old spruce stump along my road, I spotted this fungus. When I tried to identify it, it was very confusing as there are so many. I think it is a Ganoderma lucidum, but I’m not sure. Perhaps a reader can weigh in. Sure are beautiful.

From Jon Alexander:

I just stumbled on some photos of a pigeon (Columba livia domestica) I took in 2013 from the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building in New York City. (I straightened a couple today.) Not exactly the best photos of wildlife, but I like them. I don’t remember if I put a cracker there or if someone else put it there. But I imagine that some pigeons may have learned that crackers might be had with a little effort (or an updraft).

This is from Richard Pieniakowski.  I have many good pictures from him, but must download them from a Google Drive. This is from October, and a barred owl, like the one pictures above.

I just wanted to share this photo of a Barred Owl I captured the other day with you. I think that readers would appreciate looking at this silent hunter.

And from Reese Vaughn, a duck (I think it’s a mallard hen, Anas platyrhychos):

Betty Brown Duck graces the deck on the resaca in Brownsville, Texas. The Williamsons, Kay and John, are her staff. I have asked if she is a mallard hen and how long they have been feeding her — she swims up for food on an elaborate deck that belongs to my friends Kay and John Williamson and they call her Betty Brown Duck. They may be able to send more pictures. Every morning they feed a swarm of nutria, fish, and water birds.

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 19, 2024 • 8:15 am

Today we have the seventh and final installment of Robert Lang‘s recent trip to Antarctica in a small boat, and there are videos as well as photos. Robert’s notes are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Antarctica Part 7: Other Wildlife

Birds—penguins and flyers—and mammals—pinnipeds and cetaceans—are the stars of the Antarctic, but there is plenty of other wildlife to be seen if one looks carefully. Underpinning the entire Antarctic ecosystem is the Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), whose total biomass is estimated to be half a billion metric tons. While we often saw animals feeding on them in the open water, we could only infer their presence from the feeding behavior; they’re too small to see (from a shallow angle, that is—overhead imagery has captured vast swarms). But we did find one in a tidepool. They’re tiny: just a few cm long.

Even smaller, and lower-down on the food chain, are copepods (class Copepoda), seen here also in a tidepool along with some red algae (Phyllophora sp.). These are about the size of a grain of rice.

Copepods and krill both eat phytoplankton; krill also eat copepods. Another of their predators is the smooth comb jelly (phylum Ctenphora, order Beroidae). We saw this one swimming just below the surface near our Zodiac; the boat driver successfully maneuvered to let people on both sides of the boat see the comb jelly while avoiding the outboard motor turning it into comb marmalade.

The shoreline of the Peninsula and its islands tends to be pretty barren, as the rocks are regularly pounded by ice and waves, but we saw an Antarctic sea urchin (Sterechinus neumeyeri) tucked into a crevice just at the waterline.

In the bay of Deception Island (the volcanic caldera), we saw quite a few brittle stars (class Ophiuroidea) washed up dead. Since there were warm-water vents all along the shore, we wondered if it just got too hot for them.

On shore, there’s not much permanent life, but there’s plenty of residue of prior life, including quite a few relics of the whaling days—not just human relics, but also whale bones that were left behind. Here’s an old whaling boat with some whale vertebrae in the foreground.

There are only two vascular plants in Antarctica, but there’s quite a range of lichen to be found on the rocks. These are two from King George Island, one with cup-like stalks, and another bringing a splash of bright color to the normally gray landscape.

I’ll close with an image of the not-terribly-elusive Red Penguin; we saw several flocks over the course of two weeks, typically waddling along their age-old trackways after migrating there from their giant floating rookeries. We saw them at some remove several times, but kept our own respectful distance, not wanting to disrupt their natural behaviors.

And this brings our Antarctic journey to an end.

Readers’ wildlife photos

February 22, 2024 • 8:15 am

Today we have photos of fungi from Rik Gern of Austin, Texas. Rik’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Here are some photos from Copper Falls State Park in northern Wisconsin, taken last September. The park has miles of trails and buildings constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The falls are a great attraction, but my attention was also grabbed by mushrooms growing along the hiking path. Orange Mycena (Mycena leaiana) typically grows in clusters on rotting logs, but this batch was growing on a small section of fence on one of the trails. Among the miles of fencing, this was the only spot that I saw that had significant growth, so perhaps it wasn’t treated as thoroughly as the rest of the fencing. At any rate, it provided beautiful staging for this cluster of mushrooms.

I know they aren’t that kind of mushroom, but I couldn’t resist playing with several of the images to give them a jolt of color and a psychedelic vibe!

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 4, 2023 • 8:30 am

Today we’ll have a mélange of photos that have accumulated over the past months from readers who sent in just a couple of pix. The captions are indented, and click on the photos to enlarge them.

From Jon Alexandr:

I’m not a biologist, but I do occasionally like to take photos of plants and animals, including “bugs.” Because I favor its handy small size, I’m still using an old, first-generation iPhone SE (2016 or 2017), so it’s not “professional” photography. Still, I think the attached impromptu photo of a “grasshopper” in a wood pile next to my house has a certain presence, which is maybe amplified by the lighting, shapes, and textures.
The grasshopper’s body was just slightly more than an inch long, I estimate, not counting the extremities. Location is San Francisco East Bay, Contra Costa County.

From Bryan Lepore, sent October 29:

 I spotted what I think is a tree frog, genus Dryophytes, today. Middlesex county, MA.She is about the size of my thumbnail and has a very long jump span. Usually, I see what I think are Leopard frogs (genus Lithobates) jump like that but they’re green. Maybe she’s a brown variant, or a differeny frog.

Two animals photos and an architecture photo from reader joolz:

 Two of my photographs from the Oceanographic Museum, Monaco 2023.  Taken through glass.
Lion fish [Pterois sp.]. Oceanographic Museum, Monaco 2023. Didn’t take a photo of the info.
Longspined Porcupine Fish – Diodon holocanthus. Info on sign: “At the slightest danger it inflates its body, pushing its spines outwards to protect itself. The fish of the Diodontidae family are toxic and unfit for human consumption. In Japan, where they are eaten in sushi, a special licence is needed to cook them.”

Queen Hatshepsut‘s Temple at Deir El Bahri, Egypt. Taken from a hot air balloon decades ago.

Hatshepsut was very powerful and took on the role of Pharoah. She wore the pharaonic regalia, which includes a false beard, so trans activists claim she was transgender, but there is no basis for this assertion. She just wore the standard regalia that all pharaohs wore. Her stepson Thutmose III had her name erased from monuments and she was unknown for centuries. Thankfully her legacy as a female Pharoah was restored when the hieroglyphs at this temple were translated in the 1800s.

Photos of the solar eclipse that occurred on October 14. The first is from Don McCrady:

Thought I’d send you a hot-off-the-press shot of this year’s annular solar eclipse, this one from Winnemucca, Nevada.An annular solar eclipse is a total eclipse of the sun by the moon, where the moon is far enough away from the earth that its disk does not fully cover the sun’s, creating a “ring of fire” effect such as this one.  I took this with a Canon EOS R5 with an RF 100-500 x1.4 extender, for a total focal length of 700mm.

From Avis James:

Bill and I went to a field half way between Ruidoso and Roswell New Mexico in the path of the annular eclipse this morning.  We took a colander- it is has the Star of David pattern:
Here is the shadow it made at full angularity!  The dot in the middle of each circle is the moon in the middle of the sun!

From John Runnels, “Unknown mushroom species, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.” (Readers: can you ID?)

Finally, a weird giraffe from Bob Wooley of Asheville, NC:

I know you don’t usually do zoo photos, but if you feel like making an exception for an exceptional animal, you’re welcome to use these. You featured a story about this amazing unspotted baby giraffe the other day. I live about 90 minutes from Brights Zoo in eastern Tennessee, where she was born, so today I went there to see her for myself. It’s very difficult to get good pictures of her because her enclosure has a tight-mesh fence that you have to shoot through (unless you have a 12-foot-long photo stick). That’s why most of the news stories just use pictures and videos given to them by the zoo. But I got several that I think are worth sharing, and hold up to on-screen embiggening. She’s a seriously beautiful creature.

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 29, 2023 • 8:15 am

Please send in your good wildlife photos lest the feature become sporadic or—Ceiling Cat forbid—go extinct.

Today we have some nice photos by reader Mark Sturtevant; his captions are indented, and you can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them.

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This looks to be the last batch of WEIT-worthy pictures that I have from 2021.

First up are some of my favorite dragonflies, starting with the impressive royal river cruiser dragonfly (Macromia taeniolata). These are among the largest dragonflies in my area, but I am fortunate in that they are also among the most approachable. Sure, they will fly at break-neck speed as they patrol along a tree-line, as this one was, but then they hang themselves up at about eye-level, and there they sits. You may then take all the pictures you want, even at close range, and they don’t mind. The link to this species gives an idea about their size and approachability.

Next is our black saddlebags dragonfly (Tramea lacerate). Common in fields, but unlike most dragons in the skimmer family who do more perching than flying, these will fly all day, effortlessly cruising around on those overly-broad wings. But occasionally one will give me a gift by sitting on a perch as this one was at a pond near where I work. So I like them because they play hard to get.

At another park there are redbud trees, and late in the season I noticed that just about every leaf was fastened shut as shown here. What was the surprise inside?

Why, a whimsical caterpillar! A squirmy little Dr. Seussian sock. In olden times, finding an ID of something like this would be a great tedium, but now we have the BugGuide web site. A simple search in there for “caterpillar on redbud”, and immediately we learn that this is the redbud leaffolder, Fascista cercerisella.

One might think that a “March fly” would be a spring insect, but actually members of this family have several generations a year, and they emerge synchronously in large numbers. One day in November just about every leaf along a forest trail had at least one of these odd little flies. They are also known as “love bugs”, as they are often seen mating. This particular species is Bibio albipennis.

I try to carry my wide-angle macro lens when I go out, but I seldom find a scene that will work with it. Here I managed to get a picture among a group of unknown mushrooms. Sorry, I don’t know the species.

One day the wife brought home a Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula). A friend from down the street was visiting, and she had never seen one having a meal so I brought in a fly, slightly stunned it, and placed it as shown. As is well known, the trap is sprung if the hairs inside are triggered more than once. Our friend was pleasingly horrified at the sight of botanical carnivory.

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 1, 2023 • 8:15 am

Send in your photos, folks. We’re doing this feature after my Parisian hiatus, but I always need photos, and in fact we’re running low.  Please follow the instructions on the sidebar (or link), “How to send me wildlife photos.” Thanks in advance.

Today’s batch comes from reader Rodney Graetz in Canberra. His narrative and captions are indented, and you can click on his photos to enlarge them.

A Backyard in Autumn

It is Autumn here in Canberra Australia with warm 25°- 30° C (81°F) temperatures in addition to many months of good (La Nina) rainfall, our backyard is humming.  Here are a few examples of the activity.

Life at work.  We do not feed birds; we do cultivate flowers to attract birds and insects.  This flower is a Paper Daisy (Xerochrysum species) native to the arid outback.  We chose it for the beauty of its colour and shape and (successfully) predicted that it might also attract insects, even though daisies are not big producers of nectar.  If you search this photo, you will find six very different insect species, all foraging in separate parts of the one flower.  Life: busy at work.

Look at me, look at me!  A light-hearted comment on the strategy of sexual dimorphism – the separate colouring and body shape of male and female organisms and the competition for mating opportunities.  Here is the male Orchard Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio aegeus) – I think.

This is the female of the species – I think.  She has the wider wingspan with very different wing shape and colouring.  Both sexes were happily and simultaneously feeding on the nectar-rich flowers of ‘Butterfly Bush’ (Buddleia sp.), but no display or mating behaviour was noticed.

The body shape of a praying mantis appears too frail for an ambush predator, but obviously, they are successful.  Here a slightly battle-worn, thin (starving?) individual; note the tattered antennae.  It was still very aware, reacting to my presence metres away shooting with zoom lens.  I suspect that the costuming of several of the more bizarre characters in the Star Wars movies, such as Admiral Ackbar, was based on the head shape of a praying mantis.

The ambush predator in action – note the long antennae folded carefully away from the struggle.  This mantis – not the same individual as above – hung itself on the underside of a leaf and captured an unsuspecting, daylight-flying Grape Vine Moth.  This moth species is a chubby, relatively heavy prey item and it was its vigorous fluttering struggle that I noticed.  I was impressed that the mantis was able to continue to hold it while hanging from the leaf.  How to stop the fluttering of the heavy moth?

Simple – first, disconnect the control centre.

A familiar fungus (Amanita muscaria), about 3 days old, in the front lawn.  Originally a Northern Hemisphere species, now spread world-wide, travelling as a component of the root system mycorrhiza of introduced trees, such as Quercus rubra (Red Oak), a street tree whose scattered, woody leaves are obvious in the photo.  I like its symmetrical shape and colour, along with the mystery of its rapid appearance, followed by slow decay, and disappearance.  I know it is toxic, but not lethally so, while a close relative, Amanita phalloides (‘Death Cap’), growing just a few streets away, is super-lethal, as two visiting Chinese Chefs recently demonstrated.

A young female (Doe) Eastern Grey Kangaroo  [Macropus giganteus], likely less than 3 years old, and her independent young (Joey), both on alert to my presence.  This not my backyard – though I have found kangaroos there – but in a nearby (300 metre) nature reserve.  Note the focussed orientation of ears, which can rotate about 90°.  By her height, this is likely her first joey, which by its size, she can no longer carry in her pouch (marsupium).  If you look at her lower abdomen, you can see her pouch is gaping open, indicating that the joey is still suckling.  This is one example of why Canberra is called the ‘Bush Capital’.

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 27, 2023 • 8:15 am

Today’s photos of various plants and fungi come from reader Rik Gern. His notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:

These pictures from Wisconsin’s Northwoods. There are two sets of mushrooms, one of fern and moss, and another of wildflowers and miscellany. All of the pictures in this series were taken in northern Wisconsin in late August.

Mushrooms:

These (photos 1-7) were all growing in close proximity. At first I thought there were several types of mushrooms in the area, but after going back and forth comparing these pictures to some online I came to the conclusion that they are all White pine bolete, or Chicken fat mushrooms (Suillus americanus) in different stages of growth. If these are indeed Chicken fat mushrooms, then they are edible, but I don’t trust my amateur identification efforts nearly enough to put that to the test!

The first one is young and smooth, but in the next picture you can see that it’s right next to a larger mushroom that’s got a slight brown crackling on the cap.

I would guess that these are in between the ages of the two mushrooms in the previous picture.

(The caps are really turning here. These mushrooms are  said to be associated with pines, and sure enough, they’re surrounded by tiny little pinecones!

Underneath the cap there are pores rather than gills or blades, and this gave a clue as to the identity.

Another identifier is a scaber stalk which can be seen here (and another pine cone for good measure).

Nature conveniently left this cross section!

Last three photos: I believe these are all the same type of mushroom, the beautiful but deadly Destroying Angel (Amanita bisporigera). The first one looked like a pale ghost by the side of the road, and the last two pictures are of the same mushroom from different angles. It was growing on a tree stump, popping up thru a thick mat of moss and pine needles.