lots of birds and a good mushroom

Did I suggest in my last post that things are getting quieter down at the marsh at sunrise? This morning there were literally hundreds of birds moving in every direction but the flocks were so dominated by a few species -- Yellow-rumped Warblers, American Goldfinches, Red-winged Blackbirds plus a few sparrows -- that it was impossible to pick out anything else. What I couldn't see however I could hear: an Eastern Towhee, kinglets, nuthatches, chickadees, Blue Jays and Crows. If there were rarities, there were well hidden amidst the flocks of familiar avifauna.

Although this was not a good summer for mushrooms (too dry), fall rains have brought out a number of species, including some great edibles. In addition to the Hen-of-the-woods (Grifola frondosa) and the Honey Mushroom (Armillaria mellea), there has been a burst of Wood Blewits, one of the tastiest of the wild fungi. Wood Blewits have the distinction of being an example of a species that has a stable and recognizable English name while the scientific name (which is supposed to be universally recognized and therefore more stable than the common name) keeps shifting. I have seen it called, among other things, Clitocybe nuda, Lepista nuda, Tricholoma nudum, Tricholoma personatum, Lepista personata (the last two probably designating a closely related but different mushroom). In any case, our Blewits are light purple with firm flesh, densely packed gills, a smooth rounded cap, a short stem and a bulbous base.

Eric Salzman