Winter life on the forest floor

Before I forget I want to go back to Saturdays walk in the woods near Watermead bridge. I think that when you are in a new place you instinctively become more observant. It must be something about not having enough information to relax and so we look and listen and smell more than we do normally. Sometimes I try to force myself to take a sensory bath in my surroundings, especially if they are familiar to me. Even if it is somewhere completely new I try and absorb the feeling of being in that place. Then I try to focus on what individual elements are arriving in superposition to build the picture. What can I hear? What can I see? What have I overlooked? This is not pointless. I think we only understand a place when we have let it into our soul.

Tuning in often makes me walk slower and sometimes it makes me stop to think and see. In the woods I couldn't just see water everywhere but I could hear it and smell it. But it wasn't water that made me stop. Down near my foot was a tiny red mushroom. It was most likely a Galerina mniophila but it could have also been a young Tubaria furfuracea. Its always hard to tell when they are this small. From one side of its cap to the other it measured about 2mm. The Bigascope has really made it look big! It looked so vulnerable that I felt sorry for it. Its not really the type of fungi that you expect to see this time of year. A nearby tree stump provided a good variety of more hardy specimens for me to have a good look at.

This one is a Candle Stick Fungus (Xylaria hypoxylon) and it looks like it should be growing on a coral reef rather than the hardwood stump on which it was growing. The part you can see is the spore releasing fruitbody of the fungus. The rest of it is hidden from view in the wood itself.

Growing down the sides of the stump was this White Rot Fungus (Bjerkandera adusta). Again the part of the fungus we can see is the spore releasing fruitbody. I always think that there is something a little un-Earthly about fungi.

Anyhow, I was walking back towards the car when alas a flash of luminous green erupting from a small bush next to me made me realise that I had just scared off one of my all time favourite animals. Unfortunately it had now flown away before I could get my camera out. Undeterred I stalked around the corner and spotted it high in a tree. Ladies and gentlemen I bring you my best photo yet of a Green Woodpecker.