Toft Wood Lichens

 There are some projects that I regret deciding to pursue and I think Lichen ID might be added to the list!! The differences between species or even genera in some cases is very small visually and so a complete classification of a localities lichens would have to involve a chemical testing! At the moment, I am resisting this and just doing tentative IDs having photographed them for their sheer beauty in colours and shapes!! These are from our 30-year old community wood in Toft. The first 3 images are from raw files sharpened and denoised with RawPrime3 and stacked in Zerene stacker while the others are jpegs from the Olympus camera's in-camera stacking. Again to shoot them all in raw, sharpen and denoise and then stack would be very time consuming. Lots of decisions!!

Extending Paxton Lichen/Fungi List

An enjoyable walk round Heronry trail at Paxton yesterday in the sunshine spending some time in the scrubland near the Quarry photographing a few more lichens and fungi. The most interesting find for me was this bright pink lichenocolous fungus - Illosporiopsis christiansenii parasitic on Physcia tenella and sometimes also on Xanthoria parietina. It grows in and on the host lichen, feeding from it, degrading it, and eventually killing it. You can see in the second image bottom right the areas or sick or dead lichen of both species. I will add the ID sheet when completed.

Toft Churchyard Lichens

Today's post definitely a preliminary look at what is growing on the walls and gravestones in our village church. They were very difficult to photograph handheld in not very good light. I will try again with some type of lighting to get sharper images for ID, The summary image at the end shows the IDs that various apps suggested - further shoots and comparisons of images should confirm or not these first attempts and then to check with other sources.

RSPB Sandy Walk with Paxton Volunteers

A very enjoyable walk round RSPB Sandy today - the rain that was expected in the morning didn't arrive though the afternoon proved wetter than forecast. We were mainly hunting for interesting fungi, slime moulds and lichens but with the warmer temperatures some of the creatures were on the move. I have never recorded the Spotted Snake Millipede before so that was a good find. There were lots of brackets and crusts on the trunks, a few 'toadstools and we found a few slime moulds though not as many as I hoped. Tentative IDs in the sheets.