WFV, Strid Woods, 3rd November 2015

Submitted by Wildlife Field… on Wed, 4th Nov 2015, 10:34pm

Autumn TintsAutumn Tints

Not a bad day, weather wise; cloudy and still with a damp feel but not particularly cold. A good job we hadn’t gone the day before, otherwise we would have struggled to see much in the fog that covered most of the north and had led to many air flights being cancelled.

The participants of the day were collected along the route at locations such as The Branch car-park, Cottingley and Keighley, the driver of the day being Robert. Toilet facilities are available at the Cavendish Pavilion although Robert decided to make his own arrangements!

Before setting off I decided to treat myself to a bacon barm plus coffee. For only £4.95 you get a large Americano plus as good a bacon barm as you will find anywhere; I consider myself knowledgeable in such matters!  Lichen RhizocarponLichen Rhizocarpon I only managed to eat half of it and gulped down the coffee as I didn’t want to lose track of the group. I soon, however, caught up with those whose interests include botany and mycology; the rest of the group were way out of sight.

A total of 31 plants in flower were recorded by Alice and this included Burnet Saxifrage, Betony and Harebell. The bird count provided by Donald was only 21, as of course all the migrants for which this wood is famous, have long since departed. Best birds seen were Kingfisher, Partridge and Dipper.

Early November is still good for fungi and Joan, Stuart and I remained adrift from the rest of the group till we all met up at the aqueduct for lunch; where I finished off my barm! We three, plus Eric and Alice who were botanising, made slow progress as there were a good number of logs and stumps to investigate alongside the main path. There was far too much leaf litter on the ground to see any boletes, russulas or milkcaps. We did however find a good number of crusts and bracket fungi. Species identified included: Jelly Rot, Lumpy Bracket, Purplepore Bracket, Blackfoot Polypore, Black Bulgar, Rooting Shank,Purple JellydiscPurple Jellydisc

Fly Agaric, Shaggy Parasol, Stump Puffballs, Glistening Inkcaps, Sheathed Woodtuft and several Mycenas including one exquisite tiny white one, possibly one of the Hemimycena family; several others remained unidentified.After afternoon refreshments at the pavilion we headed back. The return journey was uneventful until after we dropped off Janet. She had picked up the wrong rucksack but fortunately we got the request to go back and remedy the matter before we had travelled too far!

Another good trip and thanks to our leaders Maddie and Alice. See pictures in the gallery here. 

 

John Gavaghan   

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