The first week of November has seen me down by the river Aire a couple of times hoping to get more good sightings of Kingfisher and also looking for Fungi – knowing full well that I would probably not be able to identify them. I also attended the Fungi Foray organised by Bracken Hall Countryside Centre. So here we have Kingfisher, Kestrel, Waxcap, Milkcap, Fly Agaric, Candlesnuff and others.
As usual tap/click/touch an image, not its caption, to see it in its gallery.
Kingfisher down by the river
I got some good sightings of Kingfisher and also had several pleasant chats with other people as we watched them. Other birds were also around. A Nuthatch was just behind a Kingfisher at one time and a Robin did a fly-by. I saw the flash in the viewfinder as it went past but didn’t know what it was until I looked at the photo. A Grey Heron could be seen up nearer the canal, and at one time a Grey Heron was just visible on one of the electricity pylons.
A Pheasant spent a lot of time hidden in a bush. Kestrels were also about, looking down into the fields. Various Gulls, Magpies, Crows, Jackdaw, Jay, Blackbird, Great Tit, Blue Tit and Goldfinch were also in evidence.
I had a little walk around Denso Marston Nature Reserve looking for fungi but was a bit disappointed in the small number I spotted considering the number of tree stumps there are. One is a Trametes Bracket and the other is very like many others.
Fungi Foray
On Sunday Bracken Hall Countryside Centre hosted a Fungi Walk with the West Yorkshire Fungi Group during which we looked around the gardens of the centre, along the grass of Bracken Hall Green and down amongst the trees and leaf litter of Shipley Glen.
We had an excellent guide and several others were very knowledgeable. But I didn’t take notes. I should probably attend many more of these walks but I don’t go looking for Fungi very often so I am likely to forget everything I learn. I had to leave soon after we got back to the centre so I didn’t get chance to sit down with the experts. I need to know how to look at a fungus and then how to use the books to identify it. There seem to be some fungi that can have different colour, texture, size etc but are still the same species but others that to me look identical but can any one of dozens of species.
It would be great if someone could identify some of them for me, that might only be possible by someone that attended the walk and made notes.
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