Mosses and Lichens at Paxton

The wetter wooded areas of Paxton Pits rival Wistman's wood in Devon for the variety and amount of lichens and mosses attached to the trees. The first image is a single shot but many of the others are focus-stacked landscapes to give maximum depth of field. I enjoyed the variety of greens and shapes of fallen trees etc

Lichens in Toft

Slowly building up a library of the lichens growing in our village. Here a few from our garden and Toft Wood - experimenting with backgrounds etc. Still to add genus/species names!!

RSPB Sandy Heathland Fungi etc

A somewhat reduced party explored the heathland at Sandy in the afternoon and spent a couple of hours happily engaged with a large variety of species including this very impressive slime mould (many images are jpeg out-of-the-camera stacks as limited time to process at the moment). I also include a species sheet for the day

Toft Garden - Life on the Edge

 Sitting under my small oak tree (now about 25 years old), I became aware of how many small life forms exist on the leaves and also on the logs piled up nearby. First, a very small leafhopper (Ribautiana debilis), then a small booklouse family insect (Ectopsocus petersi) and a Pea gall caused by a small parasitic wasp. The logs are alive with life including Collembolid species and lots of fungi and lichens 

Paxton Stalk Balls and Scarlet Elf Cups

Winter Stalk Balls, Tulostoma brumale, are most commonly found on the coast in sand dunes etc but there is a good population at Paxton Pits on the gravel areas. Along with Pixie Cup lichens and Scarlet Elf Cup fungi they make wonderful macro subjects. As previous post, pairs of images - Raws processed with DxO Pure3Raw and  stacked in Zerene stacker in the computer next to in-camera stacks.