Well, a wood anyway, Swell Wood to be exact, and perhaps full is an exaggeration but I did find quite a few different types when I was walking round on Thursday.
I've had a bit of a focus on Swell Wood this week, to put those signs back in and get the scarp trail opened, which has been done now.
The egret and nuthatch signboards are back in on the path to the hide, now made of recycled plastic so they won't rot.
The scarp trail is now open and the signs (which were knocked down by a falling tree) are back up
A word of warning - the scarp trail is muddy and I would only advise walking it if you are wearing sensible shoes. It is also a bit slippery so watch your footing. The trail from Swell Wood through to Fivehead is also slippery in places so take care.
I spent a good deal of Thursday checking all the trails in the woods and decided to focus this week's blog on the various fungi I found. I showed you a couple of varieties last week but this week found quite a few more.
This round black fungus is probably King Alfred's Cakes, a common fungi of deciduous woodland where it grows on rotting wood. It can be seen year round, rather than just in autumn. The name comes from a story of King Alfred, who was taken in by a woman when he was fleeing the vikings in the 9th century. He was asked to watch her cakes but he let them burn. This fungus resembles the burnt cakes.
This clump is probably stump puffballs, another common species growing on rotting wood. As they mature they darken and squash together. It is an edible species when young but please, please, please don't try to eat them. My ID is not certain!
This is a species of bracket fungi, which typically grows in half circles on live of dead wood. Some bracket fungi can be huge but this one was fairly small, just a couple of centimetres across.
These look a lot like mica cap fungi, but I couldn't see any dusty coating so may be a similar looking species, almost certainly some sort of capt fungi. They were growing on the opposite side of the same rotten stump as the mushrooms in the next picture. It made me wonder why that stump hosted two species when so many others had none.
I dubbed these 'fairy mushrooms' because they were so little, maybe only half a centimetre across. They could be a type of bonnet mushroom, which are often small with pale caps.
This was probably my favourite one, but is also the one I have least idea what it is. I couldn't find anything that looked like it online, but it was hard to describe and online searches don't work very well for this sort of ID anyway. Sadly, I had no better way of looking without lots more time.
This pristine cup was the only mushroom I found growing out of the ground rather than on rotting wood. It may be a wood mushroom, but there are a number of white-capped mushrooms where you need to look at other details to ID.
Of course it's not just mushrooms blooming at this time of year. These ivy flowers are a great source of nectar for late-flying insects and birds.
And this little flower was a reminder that summer is not long past, and will come around again soon enough.
I'm on holiday next week but will be back the following week with an update on our winter wildlife. It will also be my very last blog, as someone has finally decided to offer me paid employment.
Take care,
Kathryn