Brand new blog from Chris Knowles, RSPB Scotland Nature Counts Trainee Ecologist.

Taking the slow road: surveying fungi on the banks of Loch Lomond

This end of a frosty spring is about as far from being mushroom season as you can get, and yet that’s what I had high hopes of finding on one of my first outings as a ‘Nature counts trainee ecologist’.

With the recent weather in mind, I set out on a surprisingly dry and not-particularly-freezing kind of morning to survey woodlands at the RSPB Loch Lomond reserve.  

1.  Ring Wood, RSPB Loch Lomond

As I took my first few steps into Ring Wood I glanced around at the dominating beech and birch, cast a hopeful eye over the copious standing and fallen dead wood and then spent the next 20 minutes in pretty much the same spot.  I had stepped into a wonderland of diversity as each trunk, log and fallen branch revealed more of the toughest  fungi  left hanging on since last autumn like the Birch Polypore (also known as the Razorstrop fungus due to it being used in the past as a tool sharpener) and some of the woody perennial fungi like the Hoof Fungus (also known as the Tinderbracket  due to it being used to carry tinder for firelighting still to this day).

2.  Hoof fungus (Fomes fomentarius)

In fact due to the large number of species found, by noon I had barely moved 20 metres from where I started.  So although it was with some reluctance that I had to drag my eyes from the ground in my search for fungi, I was rewarded over lunch by a sight in the skies.  As I sat on a bank of the loch munching a sandwich, an osprey with similar thoughts in mind repeatedly swooped down over the water catching its own lunch – it was wonderful to watch, and something I had never observed before (neither an osprey, nor an osprey’s lunch).

Soon enough it was time to get my head out of the clouds, and back into the woods for more fungi; no difficult task on a site like this. I was particularly impressed with how many species had colonised the same host plant together... with the best exhibiting no less than four visibly fruiting in close proximity on the same dead tree.

I’ll be returning to the same woods for another survey this autumn, but next time I think I’ll be bringing the kids along for a fungal lesson in sharing.