October 2014

Holme Dunes fungi

On Sunday I headed up to the North Norfolk coast to join some local naturalists in looking for dune and coastal fungi. We had a good day, seeing loads of Dune Waxcaps, Earthtongues and Collared Earthstars. Local specialties included Scaly Stalkball and Sea Buckthorn Bracket, and a couple of coral fungi may turn out to be new for me, provided we can confirm their identities! A full write up is on my blog http://jamesbirdsandbeer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/north-west-norfolk-holme-fungi.html, but...

Still plenty of invertebrates around, look for leafmines!

neilmoths's picture

Leafmines provide a way of finding many otherwise difficult to find species, as the adults are very rarely found, and even when they are can be very hard to indentify.  The species are also often very under-recorded so provide very valuable records.  There are some excellent online resources to help indentify leafmines.

Emmetia angusticollella

They're all thick down in Dorset

Just testing out the new easier upload of images to blogs that John added last night. Here is a Thick Top Shell that Seth and I found in abundnance at Chesil Beach and within one specifica area of the Worm's Head. We didn't see any of the usually much commoner Purple and Grey Top Shells there. The Tick Top Shell is bigger, broader, more conical at the top, has suggestions of steps and to my eye was a neater looking creature than Purple and Grey. Having a western distribution, I'd never seen it before as it doesn't come as far east as Brighton it would seem.

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Norwich fungi

October is always a busy month for me as vagrant birds vie with fungi for my attention at weekends. This weekend fungi won out, and I went to a local cemetery, where the ancient grassland parts host a good mixture of Waxcaps, Earthtongues, Corals and Spindles. Earlier this year Kew confirmed that some of the Earthtongues are Geoglossum elongatum, very rare in Britain, and several county firsts and seconds have been found there in the past few years. Pictures of some of the more photogenic species are on my blog here:...