Monday, September 13, 2010

A full-on day

This morning I went out to one of my favourite fungi sites - a small birch woodland above Ladybower. On the way out, my first treat was a kestrel hovering low over the bank of the reservoir. There were a few of the usual suspects in the rough grassland on the way - dung roundheads and liberty caps. The woodland itself didn't disappoint. There were about 15 that I could comfortably record, either immediately or with a small amount of work with my new edition of the trusty Phillips, and there were probably at least as many again that I could narrow down to the family, such as mycena, russula, and lactarius, plus a few more that I was unsure about. As well as the old standby bay bolete, I found a couple of fine ceps and even a few chanterelles.


Among the non-edibles, I found an amanita that was new to me (a. porphyria), several lactarius and a laccaria bicolor.
On the walk back, I had a great close up view of a couple of wrens larking about, a hare loping along the path, and this fine fellow:


This evening I had my first outing with the Sheffield Bird Study Group. Unfortunately it was rather dark and windy, but nevertheless, large numbers of gulls obliged by coming in to roost, and we even saw 4 yellow legged gulls, apparently. Perhaps not the easiest initiation for a crap birder like me. The members made me very welcome, and I can look forward to a meeting soon about photography.
My cocoa tonight will be accompanied by the gulls section in my birds field guide.

1 comment:

Pete said...

Good to meet you last night - I hope the finer points of gull ID haven't put you off birding for life!