I'm experimenting with using photogrammetry for fungi and lichens:
Ricasolia amplissima:
If you would like to download the model - perhaps to view with different software, maybe even a vr headset - it should be available from dropbox - photgrammetry.
The adder breeding season is one of my favourite fixtures in the nature-watching calendar. Just for a few days of fine weather in the late spring, the female adders go into heat very like a dog or cat, and all the male adders in the area are drawn in.
Adder - Vipera berus. Two males jostling for position by a female (the brown snake)
The males have a particlar wrestling 'dance' which they perform to determine which of them is the stronger. The winner chases off the loser and returns to guard the female from all comers.
I see adders throughout the warmer months of the year, but this is the only time when they are very active and not at all shy about human onlookers.
Continuing the crepuscular rays theme from Sunday. Again this photo was taken from the JMT work party campsite on the shore of Loch Hourn.
As this amazing blog points out so eloquently, you don't have to journey for days into the wilderness to reap the benefits of an appreciation of nature.
I found this terrapin at dusk in mid January, hauled out by the side of a river that was swollen by a hydro-electric dam venting a short distance upstream. I had already seen another terrapin swimming off through the turbid waters as I investigated the river bank near El Chorro, Andalucia.
Having been caught unawares, this terrapin decided to stay perfectly still and wait for me to go away, rather than making a dash for the river. I suspect that the rapidly changing water level in the stream had left it higher up the bank than it would usually have chosen to be.
This fungus is common on dead conifer trunks hereabouts. It has delicate lilac tints when fresh, though soon bleaching white.
There are some interesting forms in this photograph caused by the tree-trunk falling while the fungus continues to grow: the older brackets have been rotated to the vertical, subsequently developing new horizontal 'buds' along their edges.
Dewdrops adding a little extra sparkle to what is already a very pretty little mushroom. From a small patch growing on my front lawn in Kilmun. Photo date: 7th November 2010.
I first started looking for mushrooms with a set of friends who were (and still are) keen on foraging for wild food. We would go to a nice place and wander round looking for mushrooms, on finding one we would leaf through a field guide, almost always fail to identify it, then move on. Occasionally we would come across something that one of us recognised as a good edible, and we would pick them, go home and prepare a feast!
I always felt dissatisfied at the vast number of mushrooms that we failed to identify, and so, one year I decided to 'learn my mushrooms' I went out several times a week, wandering far and wide, noting particularly mushroomious spots and returning regularly to witness the annual succession of fungi. At first I could identify very little - I would bring specimens home and leaf through guide books for hours, often having to give up without pinpointing what species I had found, but over the weeks I started to recognise some of the more distinctive ones, and the process continues to this day - filling in the gaps, making ever finer distinctions. There are still many that I can't tell apart.
I was identifying more and more edible mushrooms - and finding rarer and less familiar forms. There is always a risk involved in collecting wild mushrooms - every year people die from eating poisonous mushrooms, and most of those people are not idiots: they are smart people who think they know what they're doing - like me! There is also something overly acquisitive about mushroom hunting - you stumble across a beautiful patch of boletes and immediately - whomp! they are plucked and stuffed in your bag, ready for the pot.
These two considerations persuaded me to move from mushroom eating to mushroom photography as my primary form of appreciation - there is such beauty and variety in the textures, forms and colours that I find unending enjoyment from photographing and recording what I find, and pushing myself to improve my identification and seeking skills.
Mushroom hunting is an excellent pastime - it involves spending quality time in some beautiful countryside, gentle exercise, and an almost unending variety of species to find and identify. Every time you go out, you are likely to find something new. You just need to be satisfied with only being able to identify a small proportion what you see, at least at first.
The Fly Agaric - one of the very easiest mushrooms to positively identify.
The down-sides? It is a pretty seasonal activity, and you must always *ALWAYS* be 100% sure of your identifications if you plan on eating anything.
