Calderdale Wildlife

New Year Bird Count at North Dean Woods

The walk to commorate Colin Duke, to look for his favourite fungi, and to raise money for Overgate Hospice by counting bird species, took place in varying types of rain !

From hardly raining at all, to a drenching shower with sleet mixed in; it made the greens and browns of a temperate rain forest shine out of the gloom!

The walk was cut down by about half because we were all drenched, there was a youngster with us, and the stream in Norland Clough would have been a raging torrent. The Calder and the Black Brook were well swollen.

BIRDS
Black-headed Gull
Mistle Thrush singing in the rain
Feral Pigeon
Woodpigeon
Kestrel, a female down in the drive at Clay House. Possibly eating an earthworm.
Wren
Carrion Crow
Magpie
Robin
Jay
Bullfinch
Blackbird
Jackdaw
Mallard       = 14   =  Raised so far approximatley £68.50 for Overgate Hospice

FUNGI
Earth ball - warty type Scleroderma
 "         "      smooth
Jelly Ear  Auricularia auricula-judae - great quantities
Pale Oyster - an large colony on a fallen beech
Bonfire Scalycap - Pholiota highlandensis
Poisonpie - Hebeloma crustuliniforme ?
Candlesnuff Fungus (Stag's Horn)
Small Oysters poss. 1. Creditopus luteolus (Young and still white on a fallen branch.)
also    "        "  poss. 2 .C. variabilis (on leaf debris and clinging on a live bramble.)

Very impressive was a mass of jelly fungus encircling the base of a small dead oak. It was the same colour as A. auricula-judae, but stacked up in masses of tightly curled lobes, like a ruffle collar.
Will try and get a photo this week. At first tentatively identified as Tripe Fungus A.mesenterica, I now think it fits more with Beech Jellydisc Neobulgaria pura var. foliacea, which Philips has as "rare". p.371 in the 2006 edition of "Mushrooms".