Category: David

Birch polypore fungus, also known as the birch bracket or razor strop fungus, is found quite often growing on the trunks or main branches of birch trees. It’s a parasite of the trees, and it’s not unusual for the fungus to have finished the tree off and to be growing on fallen wood, as here.

The fruiting body had various uses: sharpening razors, as tinder for starting fires, and medicinal. Ötzi the iceman, whose five thousand year old frozen body was found in an Alpine glacier, was carrying some some.

View taken only a few yards from the picture in the previous post, looking out of the edge of Himley Plantation to an open field with an oak tree in the middle. Frost remained on the grass in the shadow of the wood, but not on the grass in direct sunlight.

Sunlight streaming through the trees of Himley Plantation. There was a slight mist as the sun burned away the frost.

Another visit to Bridgnorth’s Castle Grounds, one day later. Still only one fruiting body of the magpie inkcap fungus. In twenty four hours more of the remains of the veil have been shed showing the black of the cap beneath.

Magpie inkcap fungus growing on wood chip fungus under a tree in Bridgnorth’s Castle Grounds. There have been magpie inkcaps growing in this area in late autumn for several years now. But when I checked in mid-November this year this fruiting body was standing all alone. The veil had only just begun to break up on the cap revealing the black below, so the mushroom had probably only emerged the previous night.

Two herons on opposite sides of West Park’s boating lake island, on a yopung bird, the other mature. When I noticed them one recent lunchtime, each was preening, and was standing hunched so their heads were hidden or hard to make out.