The week of ecology... and work

I did make it to the woodlands the next day, though I mostly wandered through with the OH, pillaging for blackberries (originally destined for gin, in an ideal world, but finally destined for eating).  Sadly, although it's mixed deciduous woodland with a lot of silver birch and some hazel and oak, the woodland appears to be somewhat over-managed.  I understand removing standing deadwood within 10m of a path (in a way), through H&S, however, in some areas the woodland appears to be managed beyond this.  The knock-on effect is a lack of fungal species.  In this type of woodland, you'd expect to find lots of Birch polypore -- I found two.  Sadly, there also seems to be people "tidying up" the woodland.  I'm all in favour of making places accessible and sure, habitat piles are grand, but... some standing deadwood needs leaving behind.

Last Sunday I went out to a site in Cheshire to study mosses and liverworts.  We spent most of the day squinting at things and I've an entry or two about that coming up (hopefully!).  What *was* nice is that it appears my mycology is coming along nicely and there were lots of bog species (and fungi -- including LOADS of birch polypores!) on this site, including some sundews, which I've never seen before -- again, pictures to follow in a separate entry...

Monday I was at Record again and I spent the day on MapInfo, digitising site boundaries and entering phase 1 survey data, as well as assisting in some database recording and species ID.  Tuesday, I received a book in the mail...

I've only read a chapter or two, but I'm taking it to heart. It's possibly my best purchase of the last little while.  I'm thinking of doing the plant challenges -- and using the blog to help me expand my knowledge base about the plants.  In short -- it's two plants every three days.  I'd be happy to try a species per day for the next working week and then take it from there.  Perhaps game on?

Thursday, I was suppose to go on a bat survey. Only the client cancelled, sadly.  And the ecology firm only told me two hours beforehand -- when I contacted them.  Good communication is so important!  I put in another CV with another firm on Friday.  I also received a rejection letter from the arboricultural surveyor position.  As far as rejection letters go, it's one of the nicer ones I've had:

"We were particularly impressed by your approach and the standard of your work. We will contact you if an opportunity arises where we could employ your skills..."

I knew I was their wildcard.  I'm glad they liked me enough to reply so personally.  I'm going to keep on swimming.  I'll get there.  I know I will.  And to be honest, it was a reply that gave me hope rather than saddened me.  My work is good.  My skills are good.  I'm just not a specialised arboricultural surveyor.


And today?  Today brought me a refund from HMRC for taxes taken in 2005-2006.  Not a bad week all in all!

Mushrooms!

Today and yesterday I got a job-hunt related rejection letter both days.  I also followed up a speculative CV and ordered a book about how to get into ecology.  So I guess it balances out, right?

Outside of that, I decided that yesterday would be a fantabulous day to go out and brush up my ID skills.  And it was a fantastic wander... until the heavens broke, the thunder came and even my underwear got properly soaked.  Mind, my DMs kept my socks dry, so at least there's that.  That'll teach me to believe that the weather will hold.

Until I got properly rained on, I'd been having a good little walk.  Not only do I have a new GPS app on my phone that allows me to map things, but my mushroom ID was picking up.  So, because I quite like blackberries and raspberries, I mapped out an area of accessible bushes using the app plus Bing maps.  So if anyone heads out to Dyson Woods...

http://binged.it/PANoHn -- and it's exportable to KML and a few other formats, so you can actually look at it in GIS applications if needed.  How cool is that?  In the mean time, I'll be taking a wander and getting some blackberries for blackberry gin.  None of the few raspberries I did find actually made it home (again).  But they were *so* tasty...

Outside of that, I saw two different types of fungus.  One is Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) that was growing on a felled silver birch.  The growth was quite young so it felt velvety.  There were several pores per millimetre on the underside, which was entirely white.  The fungus is listed as "inedible" on several sites.  Which is fair, because it feels leathery and unpalatable:

The underside is a proper white colour on these particular Turkey Tails.

I also saw a Common Earthball (Scleroderma citrinum).  Scleroderma citrinum literally means hard-skinned and lemon in colour, more or less, which isn't far off the mark as they feel almost rock hard to the touch:

This little mushroom is also called pigskin poison puffball and isn't a puffball at all -- it's an earthball.  Puffballs have a single opening in the top through which the spores disperse; earthballs prefer to break up and release their spores.  Common earthballs have black spores and it's worth noting that the spores may cause crying, conjunctivitis, runny nose and nosebleeds in some people -- and you'd definitely not want to be eating them.  Gastrointestinal distress is the term used.  Even that's too colourful!

And then... there was rain.  All of the rain.  So, I may head out that way tomorrow as long as it's not, you know, a proper deluge.  My ID books hate water.