Fungi Friday - Typical Fall Mushrooms with Critter Appearances

Here are a few standard fall mushrooms and a few guest appearances from critters for this #fungifriday by @ewkaw

I found some birch trees and scoped them out for birch polypores. This one was covered in them high up in the tree. The reason I look for birch polypores is I've read that you can often find chaga mushrooms with birch polypore. I think there is another fungi that will feed off the birch polypore to create a chaga formation. Sadly this time I found no chaga.

Here is some really mangled blue turkeytail. I'll have to check back in early spring to see if any new ones grow here for a bright fresh blue example of them.

Here are more honey mushrooms aka Armillaria mellea. They are starting to decay pretty badly now but still have a nice yellow color to them.

Honey mushrooms eventually turn brown and get completely eaten by bugs and slugs. Perfect Halloween witch's brew material.

As I was scoping out the rotting honey mushrooms I felt eyes on staring at me with hairs rising on the back of my neck. I turned around and saw the sneaky chipmunk with an acorn being a spy.

These are some old polypores hanging around from yesteryear. I'm not sure what they are, possibly a northern tooth polypore.

Meanwhile in a field next to the old polypores I saw a familiar shape off in the distance looking at me. This is a sandhill crane probably on its way south for the winter. They'll end up in various swamp areas in the south. Loads of them end up all the way over in Wilcox Arizona in a sulfur springs area that I used to visit when I lived there.

Some fresh moss in a puddle area was hiding some tiny little waxy caps. These are technically edible but don't taste that good, at best they can be used as a garnish to decorate a fancy plate.

Eyelash cup fungi aka Scutellinia scutellata likes to grow on wet decaying wood in swampy areas. It is fairly common but tiny and easy to overlook.

Meanwhile I heard a familiar rustling in the dry leaves that have fallen. After squinting my eyes I finally noticed the garter snake. I tried to catch this one but it was too fast and disappeared. Pretty soon it will be time for it to hibernate.

That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)