break in the weather

The soggy, windy weather finally broke and the sun actually came out today. What a relief!

The pond was active with lots of bait fish -- silversides I think -- attracting anight herons (an immature Yellow-crowned I think), egrets (mainly Great), Belted Kingfisher and Double-crested Cormorants. I heard a big splash from the neck of the pond and a Kingfisher headed straight towards the dead Red Cedar opposite, saw me and veered off to land on a dead branch further away. She (it was a female) had landed quite a good-sized fish -- perhaps a Blue Snapper -- and was jug-jug-juggling it in her beak, to kill it and get it mashed down enough to swallow. Unfortunately, a large Crow came in with obvious intent to steal the fish and she took off with her catch to finish it off somewhere else.

The other major bird of the day was a large first-year Cooper's Hawk which landed right over my head in the dead Pitch Pine overlooking the pond. Handsome, mean-looking bird. It finally decided that it didn't like my looking up at it and dashed around the corner to another dead pine perch from which it then took off for parts unknown.

Speaking of mushrooms (which I was yesterday), there is a big fruiting of the so-called Coral Mushroom -- probably a Ramaria but difficult to pin down to species level. It is all over the place under oaks and pines between the open meadow and the pond/marsh. The Coral Mushrooms are a pretty safe group of edibles but my recollection is that we tried it years ago and found it bitter so we have not tried it again. Two Laccarias are also fruiting: Lacaria laccata and the more robust (but very sandy) Laccaria trullisata. Again not top eating material. Also many different Russulae (with varied color caps) and many dangerous looking all-white mushrooms that probably belong to the deadly category of Amanitae.

Eric Salzman