As autumn advances towards winter the fungal glory days gradually begin to dwindle and those ground dwellers that are left are often difficult to find amongst a thick carpet of leaves. The Bath Nats field meeting at Stourhead was billed as a general walk around with the prospect of seeing tree sparrows thrown in as a teaser. I like my quarry to sit still so I’m not much of a birder – feeling totally demoralized when someone names a brown blob flying away fast at 150 yards without even lifting up their £2000 Swarkovski binoculars. No mention of jizz encourages me that I’ll ever get there, although I did have a magic moment yesterday when I spotted a Marmalade Hoverfly and just knew what it was.
Tree Sparrows are something of a rarity around here I’ve been told, and a quick look at a local guide to Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire birding doesn’t even mention them. So off we went with our binoculars to Stourhead along with a group of Bath Nats members with a reassuringly wide range of interests.
And so, after presenting our National Trust membership cards we set off in pursuit of the group, directed by the staff on the entrance to turn off onto an anonymous looking footpath before we got to the places that most visitors go to look at. After a 50 yard yomp uphill through the mud we found our group in a characteristic fungal hunt position – backs bent and eyes firmly on the ground.
Now here’s the surprising bit of our day out. From the outset, Madame with her keen eye was spotting the fungi – amongst the fallen leaves, on bits of fallen dead wood and later on the stacks of cordwood left behind by foresters. For the most part they were tiny. The biggest things we saw were a couple of Dryad’s Saddles – Polyporus squamosus that had fallen off their dead host and lay rotting on the ground. One of our companions said that they stink like rotten fish and unable to resist the challenge I picked one up and gave it a sniff. It wasn’t exactly fishy but it did smell rotten and felt like soft flenched whale blubber in my hands. Later we saw a ring of Shaggy Parasols – Chlorophyllum rhacodes, but beyond that pretty well everything we found was in the 1-2 cm range. Of course these are precisely the road less travelled in fungus hunting, and it was immensely rewarding to find such lovely but tiny species. Here they are, and there’s a photocall at the end of this post.
Helvella lacunosa, Elfin Saddle,
Helvella crispa, White Saddle,
Ramariopsis kunzei, Ivory Coral,
Mycena rosea, Rosy Bonnet
Crepidotus epibyrus,
Xylaria hypoxylon, Candlesnuff Fungus,
Trametes versicolour, Turkey Tail,
Schizophyllum commune, Splitgill,
Stereum hirsutum, Hairy Curtain Crust,
Bulgaria inquinans, Black Bulgar,
Flammulina velutipes, Velvet Shank,
Chlorophyllum rhacodes, Shaggy Parasol,
So all in all it was an unexpectedly joyful and accidental fungus foray.
Since our leader was a volunteer with local knowledge, the Tree Sparrows turned out to be something of a done deal; tucked away at a feeding station and nest boxes that you’d never find if you weren’t taken there, but there we are; I can barely tell a House Sparrow from a Dunnock except for the wonderful tuneless chirp of the House Sparrow that fills me with memories of my childhood home.
This morning Madame and I sat in bed with my laptop and the books heaped in the middle and identified the fungi as best we could. Who says that romance is dead? – but please don’t take these photos as definitive. Some of them could be very wrong, but we did our best.
Later we walked around the lake, and by the time we reached the iron bridge it was dusk and Madame spotted something that looked like a Swallow skimming across the water. It was a Daubenton’s bat – an almost triumphal ending to a lovely day. By the time we reached the entrance it was almost dark.
