Fall Fungal Foray, etc.

 Late summer through early autumn is a great time of year to be searching for mushrooms, a.k.a. fungi. Being the 'fun guy' that I am (joke :-), I spend a fair bit of time looking for ones to photograph. Recent moisture can have a big effect on fungi. What one sees attached to a log or growing out of the ground, is really just the fruiting body of the fungus, where spores are released and carried by slight breezes to another spot at which it can grow. Important as these above ground features are, they are only a very small part of this plant. The immense part of it is underground, in the form of tiny but very extensive threads of mycelia that collectively are absolutely enormous! A rich forest ground cover is jam-packed full of mycelia, which connect many other plants, including trees root systems, and are one of the main forms of energy that allows the richness of the forest to flourish. And they just keep expanding every year!

By comparison, a corn or soybean field growing next to a woodland is so depauperate.  The destruction of the forest which once was there, as well as the annual plowing/cultivation, has destroyed the beneficial mycelia, and the only way those crops can produce is if the farmer pours on extensive amounts of man-made fertilizers, a lot of which will end up in the local creek systems, eventually ending up in the local rivers/lakes, and be the main source of our drinking water. Yuk! And that is an important, but unfortunate topic for another blog post.

In the meantime, I want to focus on some of the fungi I have recently noted and photographed. Here are a few, all of which have been found locally, mostly at Rondeau.

One of the most impressive ones I have found quite recently is one called Chicken-of-the-woods. I have seen this species annually, and it is always worthy of note, but on this occasion about a month ago, I came across by far the most impressive example of it. I took this photo with my phone as it was raining, and did not enhance this image a bit, other than to slightly crop it. 

Some others, in no particular order are:

Conifer Mazegill

Next is one somewhat similar to the first one, and it is called Conifer Chicken-of-the-woods. It is not common in this area, but can be found on a decomposing conifer log. This one was on a rotting log of White Pine.

Clustered Bonnet

One thing that is helpful in determining what species a fungus is, is to examine the underside. Some fungi have small holes, such as this next one....

Chicken Fat Mushroom

....while others have gills. Since it is just the fruiting part of the fungus, breaking a piece off and examining the underside will have very minimal effect on the fungus.

Burnt Sugar Milky

Crown-tipped Coral Fungus

Next is one that is seldom seen, and that is just as well. It is called Golden Oyster Mushroom, native to Europe and Asia. However it has been cultivated in North America due to its apparent edibility, and no doubt spores of it have been distributed throughout much of at least eastern North America. It decomposes the wood of many native tree species, and apparently has displaced some of the naturally occurring fungal species. I have only seen it on one occasions, about a year ago.

Northern Honey Fungus

Orange Earthtongue

One of the very first species of mushroom I photographed decades ago is this next one: Orange Mycena. I see it annually now, and this was photographed in September.

Next is a type of bracket fungus, called Orange Polypore

Oyster Mushroom

Again, looking at the underside to determine whether there are gills or holes is beneficial.

Next are a couple of examples of a Pear-shaped Puffball, some of which are opening up to allow the spored to disperse.

Earthball

Next is a type of the Amanita family, a family known for its harmful, even deadly, qualities. I should add that as interested in mushrooms as I am, there are only a couple of types that I have ever eaten from the wild: Giant Puffball and one of the Morels. Even though I took a course on Mycology at University and have a couple of excellent books to help identify them, there are too many things to consider before even thinking of eating them.

Small Funnel-veil Amanita

Trooping Crumble Cap

Next is a type of slime mould known as Tubifera magna

Vermilion Cap

The next two show a variation in the one called White Jelly Fungus

And lastly, one called Witch's Cap. Not sure who comes up with the names......

In other news, just because it is of interest to many birder readers, I managed to catch up with a Red-necked Phalarope at the Blenheim Sewage Lagoons...

 ...and just a day or two ago, that of a young Purple Gallinule which had been found at the Keith McLean Conservation Lands just outside of Rondeau. At times it was out in the open and relatively close at hand.

However when I first saw it, it was tucked back behind some vegetation, still identifiable, but not what I had hoped to work with. Fortunately for me, and many others who were out looking for it, it did eventually come out in the open and was busily nipping of bits of something on the underside of the lotus leaves!

 On another note, some of the long-time readers of Nature Nuggets will have realized that I don't produce as many as I used to. Of course when my dear wife Marie passed away, that was a significant adjustment and I cut back on blog posts as well as other things. However in early June of 2025, some friends suggested I start an additional blog, sharing some of the life-changing things I had experienced and learned from, especially in the previous few years. And so my new blog, entitled Life Is A Journey, began. I now have 47 posts on that blog sharing the many ups and downs of life, some of which were devastating, and others resulting in some significant blessings. Nature continues to be part of the story in some of them. If you are interested in some of my background that makes me who I am, check it out if you like. The first post can be found at this link: and progresses in bits and pieces through the decades of my (and Marie's) lives. It is also mentioned on the lower right-hand-side of this blog, in the category of Blogs I Follow. As I continue through some of the ups and downs of life, nature will likely be still an important part of it, and one I have in mind for a post in the near future is about spiders!

 

If you would like to subscribe to Nature Nuggets, send me an email to: prairietramper@gmail.com 

 

Wonderful Waterbirds

 It is that time of year when birds are on the move southwards. Fortunately there are some great places in Chatham-Kent which attract these migrants, enabling them to replenish their energy reserves before making the next leg of their journey.

There is no question that the high water levels in the Lake Erie region, and elsewhere, have caused problems for humans living near the water front. But for water birds, it has been great. For example the flooded fields of the Keith McLean Conservation Lands just outside of Rondeau Prov Park, is being well used by many species of water birds.

For birders, shorebirds are of particular interest right now, as the many thousands of shorebirds that nested in the arctic or sub-arctic regions are now making their way south. Many will fly right over and beyond, but there are always a few that touch down locally at least for a little while.

At the area I refer to as Lake McLean at the KMCL, there are sometimes as many as 150 or so individuals of a dozen or more species at any one time. So far in the last 2-3 weeks there have been about 20 species observed, some quite common and others much rarer. The latter ones always garner a bit of extra attention from birders.

The first few shown next are some of the regular ones, but still nice to see.

Greater Yellowlegs

This next one, Lesser Yellowlegs, is almost always more abundant than its larger relative.

The smallest regular shorebird is the Least Sandpiper, below. It is a first year bird.

Quite a bit larger is, in spite of its name, this Short-billed Dowitcher. There have been 1-5 of them at KMCL over the last few weeks, and a single member of its close relative the Long-billed Dowitcher has just been reported in the last few days.

A more slender appearing shorebird, often associating with the dowitchers, is a Stilt Sandpiper.

At least a couple of Stilt Sandpipers have been seen on a regular basis.

A shorebird that always gets the attention of birders is this next one, a Red Knot. This is a juvenile bird, so it doesn't show any reddish coloration that an adult in breeding plumage does. It looks a bit like a chunky dowitcher with a short bill (but not to be confused with a Short-billed Dowitcher :-)

It has been around for several days, and while it moves around quite a bit along the shores of Lake McLean, it can actually appear relatively tame. This next photo is a full frame shot, no cropping whatsoever. At one point I could barely get the full bird in my camera's frame. It is a seriously declining species in North America.

A somewhat more regular migrant, but not often seen on mud flats, is this Buff-breasted Sandpiper. It has a slightly warmer colour tone than many of the grayer shorebirds. It wasn't quite as tolerant as the Red Knot, and all of these images are greatly cropped. Fortunately the light was excellent at the time.

Along the lake shores, one is more likely to see this next shorebird, the Sanderling, as it scurries along the shoreline searching for tidbits of something at the water's edge.

Regular water birds in places like the KMCL include Great Egret.....

....and of course Great Blue Heron. This particular individual was exhibiting some territorial behaviour, as indicated by its upturned bill and fluffed feathers and strutting along in the direction of another one, just to the left of this photo. The one shown here was apparently trying to encourage the other one to leave, which after a few moments, was successful in doing.

The big news of the last day or so was the appearance of a young Purple Gallinule, found by Steve Charbonneau at the Blenheim Sewage Lagoons. It is quite a rarity in Ontario, although it does show up somewhere in southern Ontario from time to time. This is the first record for it in Chatham-Kent as far as I am aware. It is a skulking type, and since it is most likely to occur at the muddy but vegetated edges of wetlands, those areas are often difficult to access and view, so it may be more regularly occurring than records would indicate.

As a young bird, it exhibits the warm brown colours, not the purple that it will look like in its later breeding plumage. This next photo shows the breeding plumage, a bird I photographed on May 6, 1984 at Tremblay Creek Conservation Area in the north east corner of adjacent Essex County.

In addition to the warm brown, which the regularly occurring relative Common Gallinule doesn't show, is the pale bluish shield at the top of its beak.

At one point one could see the Purple Gallinule and a Sora in the same field of view.

With shore and water bird migration in full swing and which will continue for the next few weeks, one can only imagine what else might show up!