Mostly tiny umbrellas

These are the rest of the "ordinary" mushrooms from the Canyonview Trail. (Note: "ordinary" does not mean "boring" nor does it detract from their beauty. It's just that they're there, everywhere, behind every log, in every patch of decomposing maple leaves, pushing through every moss blanket.)

Probably Mycena sp. With two species of moss, Beaked Oregon, and possibly
Electrified Cat's tail. And more of that powdery stuff.

On the ground with moss. I think the one at upper left is the Coastal Leafy moss.

Another moss, another umbrella. Palm tree moss, maybe?

A greyer variety. On moss and Bigleaf maple leaves.

A larger mushroom, on a mossy log.

On the end of a log, an outbreak of Red-belted polypores. Are the glossy black lumps older reds, or are they a different species altogether? I don't know. The woods are full of mystery!

More white stuff

I've paged through my mushroom and slime mold books over and over, and can't identify these.

On the underside of a log

This was the largest of a series of patches of a white and cream growth, soft and moist, with pink spots in the thicker areas. Fungus? Slime mold? I don't know.

A closer look. 

And then there's this:

White and green powders

Many of the stumps and trees along the Canyonview Trail are covered with a fine white or green powder, spreading itself sometimes over the whole stump. In the photo above, it's even growing on the spider webs. Another one I can't identify.

On a small, broken twig lying on the ground, I found these white mushrooms growing:

Top view. Fanning out from a side stalk. The moss shows the size.

And the view from underneath. The curve at the left is my thumb.

Hideaways

Miniature white mushrooms hiding in cracks in tree bark:

Pure white balls, pinhead to marble size.

These are a bit larger, and stalked. Growing under roots on a nurse stump.

Zooming in on others on the same roots. They burst through from the inner "meat" of the roots; note the broken end, where no bark impedes their growth.

These grow in clusters from bottom to top of a deep crack in the bark.

And where the bark is long gone, these side-stalked tan mushrooms force their way out.

I've tried and failed to identify these beauties.

What are these?

Upside-down mushrooms? With the hyphae out in the open?

Or something else? A slime mold, maybe?

They are tiny: compare to the size of the moss at the end of the stick. They were on broken twigs on the ground under the shelter of old logs.

 More. Most were like this; radiating spikes bursting out of the twigs.

Cat's tongues, Electrified tails, and Oregon hat decor.

It's a while since I've seen cat's tongue fungus, and never more than one at a time. This week, on the Canyonview trail, there were many, mostly on the back side of mossy logs.

Cat's tongue, Pseudohydnum gelatinosum. AKA quivering spine fungus, white tooth jelly, etc. The moss, I think, is Electrified Cat's tail. To go with the tongues.

On another log. I like the delicate scalloped edges. The stalk often extends to the side, towards the woody base.

Red-belted polypore, Fromitopsis pinicola, wearing a hat decorated with Oregon beaked moss.

Orange jelly, on a very wet log. It hadn't been raining, but this forest is very damp, and takes days of sunshine to dry out. Note the tiny, dark blue buttons; probably early lichen settlers.

Canyonview Trail

It's mushroom season. On a short (very short: I've been rather sick over the Christmas season, and still haven't got my strength back); ... a short walk along the Canyonview Trail beside the Campbell River, I took well over 100 photos, mostly of mushrooms, mostly tiny. I'm working now on processing and possibly identifying them.

Meanwhile, here's the trail itself:

A well-travelled trail. It's a few minutes from downtown, easy walking, with good parking at several points along the trail. Cedars, Douglas firs, hemlock, Bigleaf maples, red alder, ferns, more ferns, moss. Moss everywhere. More moss. And mushrooms.

Light and dark. The sunlight shines on the far side of the river; here, we're in permanent shadow.

When I was a kid, I would have called this a good climbing tree. Many, nicely separated branches, soft padding on each branch in case you slipped. Getting too old and stiff now, but I can still dream.

Where the sun shines through, each mossy trunk and branch is outlined with yellow-green.

At river's edge, the remains of an old stump hosts mosses and lichens. And - do you see it? - a baby huckleberry shrub.

Not a drowning buffalo/unicorn.

Winter grass

Just grass. Beside the estuary.

Just because.

Huckleberry spider

Our red huckleberry, common in our deep rainforests, is evergreen, after a fashion. It sheds its leaves in the fall, like the rest of the deciduous plants, but the stems and branches stay bright green all winter. And now, with the warm winter that we're having, they are deciding it's spring already, and sending out bright pink buds.

Huckleberry shrub, Canyonview trail

Zooming in to see the pink buds.

Moving around the bush, looking to find a less busy background, I almost put my nose through a spider's web.

Long-legged trapper.

I haven't seen many spiders, or insects, either this winter, although I've been searching for them, so I was glad to see a spider, and I hope she's had better luck with insects than I have.

Blurry; she's noticed me, and is pretending to be a bit of twig or dry pine needle twisting in the wind.

And maybe it will be safer over here on the branch.

I had frightened her, so I backed off and went my way. At least I hadn't broken her web.

An assortment of nurse stumps

An old stump is a great spot for a growing sapling; it lifts it above the light-hogging mosses and ferns, it provides nutrients and good drainage.

Nurse stump with two trees, well established.

But some young trees are more ambitious. Here's one that chose a tall tree as a nurse stump:

There's plenty of sunlight up here! Tall snag with youngster, beside the Campbell River canyon.

Zooming 'way in: this young tree seems to be thriving up there, even in mid-winter. (And no, that's not a rabbit.)

And here are a couple of newborns, just getting settled in:

Evergreen on a nurse stump, a dozen and a half needles, about 2 inches tall.

Same stump, another seedling. Cute, isn't it?

Layers upon layers

The trunk of an old deciduous, lichen-covered tree sprouted orange flower look-alikes.

Orange crispy, on a lichen-covered deciduous tree, Tyee Spit.

I've walked past this tree dozens of times, and never noticed these before. They are quite noticeable, even from a distance.

I touched them; they're hard, dry, firmly attached to the tree. Not jelly-like at all. A dry witches butter. It had been a couple of days since it rained.

These two clumps are about an inch and a half across.

These are much smaller. The front one looks like its pushing its way out from inside the bark.

The fungus grows parasitically on the mycelium of wood-rotting corticioid fungi in the genus Peniophora. (Wikipedia)

The Peniophora are crust fungi that infect and decompose wood. Looking at photos, I realize that I've seen them without paying enough attention. So basically, the witches' butter is a parasite on a parasite.

So, naturalists observe, a flea

Has smaller fleas that on him prey;

And these have smaller still to bite 'em,

And so proceed ad infinitum.

(Jonathan Swift, 1667 - 1745)

Blue

A blue morph snow goose. I don't think I've seen one before, except maybe (probably) in the middle of one of those flocks of thousands of honking, flapping, swarming whites. This one was feeding peacefully on the lawn at Tyee Spit.

The paler geese are probably juvenile whites.

Sharing the lawn, eclipsed by the showier geese, three wigeons watch me.

Winter greys and tans, with a spot of purple

The sun came out and dried up the morning's rain. The wind died down; the waves forgot to pound the shores. Mallards chattered among the grasses at the edge of the Campbell River estuary.

At the bird blind, I met a couple of gulls.

Looking towards the city, hidden between the wetlands and the hills.

This gull allowed me to come up close. Gull guano feeds the abundant lichen on the rail.

And this gull kept his distance. He seemed to think I might try to steal his delicious crabmeat. I got the shell, and gave it to a duck.

Distant mergansers, against the light.

Beautiful purple-headed mallard.

End of the trail

Two more photos from the Hoomak Lake trail:

Tree remains in the lake. With lichen.

And this:

Why, people? Just why?

A mere hundred or so steps from the end of the trail and a trash bin, someone tossed this bottle as far into the forest as they could. I had to stumble and crawl over logs and moss to retrieve it and take it to the bins.

Why? It wasn't carelessness; that was a purposeful toss. At least it wasn't plastic, but still ...