Puffballs in the forest

With a weather forecast of rain and snow for the following two or three days, there were a couple of places that I thought I had better get to on Saturday, 6 September 2014. (Little did we all know that we were in for two days of heavy snowfall that has caused a huge amount of damage to thousands of trees throughout the city.) The first place I wanted to get to was Brown-Lowery, to check if there were any mushrooms. The previous time I went, I had only found a couple of things.

On 6 September, it was a little more rewarding and I found several large clusters of tiny mushrooms growing on tree stumps or at the base of trees and a few tiny mushrooms growing in the moss, plus the Puffballs in this macro shot. Also found several patches of bright orange Coral Fungi. Quite a few people were in the park, so I felt safer going a very short way in. Far enough, as it turned out, to watch an adult and a juvenile Three-toed Woodpecker, feeding together on a tree trunk. The young one was copying Mom or Dad, but its soft squeaking sound resulted in the adult feeding it, too. This Woodpecker species seems to be reasonably tolerant of people. They are rare birds here, so I feel very lucky to have seen these two and any others in the past.

A week later, on 13 September, I called in at Brown-Lowery again, just to check how much snow was on the ground from our two snowstorms on 9 and 10 September. Stood in the muddy parking lot and peered through the trees. Lots of snow, unfortunately, so all plants and mushrooms are now buried beneath a blanket of white.

On the way home, I decided to call in at Fish Creek Park, hoping to find a Beaver or a Mink that a friend had told me about. Though I did see a couple of Beavers, I wasn't able to get a decent photo of them. One of them was a huge animal - this was the one that was very recently found in a trap, biting off one of its front feet that was caught in the trap. Someone had been there when this was happening and she made several reports about it. Thanks, Linda, for doing this. Such a cruel way to deal with any Beaver problem! The now three-legged animal seems to be doing reasonably OK. I was luckier with the Mink, catching it in a couple of quick shots. No sign of it since then.

On the walk back to my car, I was lucky enough to see a distant doe with her two fawns. Apparently, there is another doe with triplets.