urbpan | Hammond Pond Reservation, in the rain, yet again (Reply)

We've been to this place twice, both times in weather in which most people wouldn't walk around the block. Yesterday: about 40 degrees, cold drizzle.

But if you don't go out in weather you'll miss stuff like these. These mushrooms dry up and disappear almost completely until it's wet, then they reconstitute and release spores in the rain. The fungus lives in leaf litter.

The note on the tree indicates that these birdfeeders in the middle of the forest belong to Boston University.

I don't know what these painted symbols indicate, however.

Alex and Alexis navigate a steep and slippery puddingstone descent. Maggie is the holdup here.

More tiny mushrooms, these growing from a bed of very happy moss. I didn't notice until I got home and looked at the pictures that the mushroom was a throne for a tiny king.

Here's a close-up, darkened and sharpened in photoshop. Not sure even what order this insect is: aphid? Snowy tree cricket nymph?

Some rocks make their own art.

The foam is an artifact of the secretions and respiration of bacteria on the surface of the tree (I'm pretty sure--I'll have to go reread that section of my bacteria field guide.)

On our way out Alex found that she was providing a ride for a little hitchhiker, an inchworm (geometer moth larva) disguised as a stick. This little guy was measuring out steps in sixteenths of an inch.