Catbirds and lemon drops

I was passing by the trailer that serves as the office and lounge for the Hooves and Horns department; it was a pleasant day and the door was open. As I approached, a catbird flew in. I followed it in, and watched it as it perched on a chair in front of a computer, about 2 feet away from me. "Do you want this catbird in here?" I called to the keepers over in the office.


Like a fool I didn't photograph it while it was inside. When I spoke, it quickly flew out but not far, just outside the doorway onto these lawn chairs. I'm not sure what its plan was--probably it was just checking out the territory, seeing if there were food sources or nesting places.


The wooden rail fences around many of the Hooves and Horns exhibits sprout Bisporella citrina when it rains. The largest of these lemon drop mushrooms is about 1 mm across.

Phallus transplant

Stinkhorns are some of my favorite mushrooms. They are among the most recently evolved groups of mushrooms--how do we know? Because they depend on other recently evolved groups of organisms--flies and beetles--in order to reproduce. They produce a powerful odor in order to attract insects with a taste for waste and decay. And nature has provided them with weird shapes, making them look like tentacles or dicks.

Before the mushroom emerges from its substrate (typically mulch or wood chips), it forms a structure that looks like an egg, or a fleshy onion. The mushroom springs from this structure; the stalk is made of foam-like material that rapidly absorbs water and splits the egg in half--the top skin comes off leaving the green stinky "gleba" or spore mass. (Click the word "phallus," below to see pictures of this.)

I found some of these stinkhorn eggs in wood chips down on the bank of Mother Brook. I cut out a section of substrate and removed two eggs and brought them back to my house, placing them in a little triangle of wood chips (which I had originally set up to try to grow wine caps, but that's another story). The next day the first stinkhorn erupted, then the next on the second day. Today, the third day, there is nothing left but the bottom of one of the eggs. Slugs, millipedes, and the rain have removed them almost completely.

These are, or were, Phallus ravenelii .

3:00 snapshot #1305