Good Mud

I have been seeing some amazing posts from the US of the snowfall there. Here in the UK we will be lucky to get any snow this winter but we do get good mud.

This was going to be my "The Hunt For Red November" post and it was going to be an account of our search for Buddy and what we found whilst we were searching. However I now suspect that I have been duped and that the whole thing was a set up.

I have been leading the investigation into the abduction of the puppy and the first thing that I had to look at was who had the most to gain?

There was no ransom demand and for a while it seemed to me to be a motiveless crime.

In fact the only one who benefited from his imprisonment was Buddy's best friend and companion Fizz. She got to spend most of Sunday and many hours of Monday helping me to search for him.

She also had the opportunity, if anybody was going to be with Buddy on that fateful Sunday morning it would have been his constant companion. She could easily have nudged the door shut after Buddy was inside.

She doesn't have an alibi. It was Sunday morning, people were working in the yard and all of the gates were open, the dogs all had free run of the place.

Forensics didn't turn up anything. Her paw prints were all over the scene but she always has access so you would expect that.

Unfortunately my investigation has to end here. Buddy is not going to say anything. He spent the night in a warm barn and then got treble fussed over when he emerged and Fizz is just giving me Angel Face (How could I think such a thing?)

Could these two be conspirators? We will never know.

One thing that we do know is that Fizz had a lot of fun searching for Buddy and many extra hours of walks and Buddy is now out of intensive care and playing in the yard with his new toys. Plus the Humans have learned a valuable lesson that we must spend more time playing with the dogs and give them much more love and attention.

Here is Red November.

We targeted our search around the Beast's lair at the end of Badger Alley. For the puppy to disappear without trace like that he would have to have been eaten by something quite big, that was my reasoning.

I took this opportunity to revisit the Guelder Rose because following my recent post I had received a tip off to go and look at the seeds.

Who would know that inside the berries were these beautiful little heart shaped jewels?

I am told that when washed and allowed to dry they fade to a delightful pink. Many thanks to Mar'yana Svarnyk for that information.

Our next red was the Bramble.

This sign was just like a red rag to a puppy.

Who made Sign the boss?

Well, you know about Fizz and timber stacks.

In "other reds" there were some lovely Roses....

and in the depths of the Beast's lair Ivy was doing  it's bit for Red November.

It was too dark and wet to do the Ivy justice but I know where there is some very colourful Ivy growing on Aspens and we will look at that soon.

Oh and I forgot to tell you... Fizz got muddy :)

My Precocious little Tremella mesenterica.

My lease says, "No Pets!" So it probably goes without saying that my pets can't have pets either. Try telling a Yellow Brain Fungus that :)

It is raining today. Fizz and I have been out for hours but taking photographs was difficult so today I am not going to write "The Hunt For Red November," which is what our walk turned into, I am going to tell you a different story.

Cast your mind back to March. Fizz and I were just little puppies then with all of the Spring and Summer to look forward to. We were exploring the sheep pasture when we found some interesting sticks under an old Oak tree.

This stick contains a fungus known as Yellow Brain Fungus or Tremella mesenterica.

It is an interesting Jelly fungus because although it lives in dead wood it does not feed on the wood, it is parasitic on crust fungi that are also in the wood.

I brought my sticks home to live with me for future observation and also because I sometimes get lonely and I thought that it would be nice to have a pet of my own.

The other sticks in this picture are possessed by a fungi called Black Witches Butter, I will tell their story another day.

Just as with any new pet I taught it basic obedience. I taught it to "Stay." That was the only thing that it really picked up.

Then at the beginning of March I put it on a shed roof just outside of my front door and told it to stay. A grape vine grew over it and I forgot about it until yesterday. Eight months later my obedient stick was right where I had left it.

It had developed a new fruit body.

This fruit is a very different colour because it is wet. As it dries out the colour gets darker and the one that I found in March was quite dry. I am very happy to see it like this, it has added to my knowledge of Yellow Brain Fungi :)

But this is not what this post is about.....

Down at the other end of the stick something else was going on.

Now I have a stick that is possessed by a yellow fungi and so I naturally assumed that the yellow "happening" at the end of the stick was another aspect of my T. mesenterica.

It doesn't look like Yellow Brain Fungus but what are the chances of my stick being owned by two different yellow species?

I keep my brains in a stick on the shed roof, I had to seek expert help and after a bit of head scratching this is what they told me...

You do indeed have two different species in your stick Colin. That what you are watching is a slime mould just beginning to form.

My Brain Fungus has a pet of it's own.

Slime Moulds are amoebas, single cell organisms. They are very similar to fungi and used to be classified as such but now they belong to a different Kingdom altogether, the Amoebozoa.

Like Fungi they reproduce through spores and they eat organic matter but unlike fungi they can move.

When food is abundant slime moulds only exist as single cell organisms but when food is in short supply they can send out a signal to all the other little slime moulds that calls them all together. They congregate into a bigger organism that can detect new food supplies.

That is what we are watching. The Slime Moulds are having a party :)

When I checked on them this morning they had transformed themselves.

I am sorry about the quality of these pictures but it really is dark and wet here and I have to photograph this now, as it happens.

A couple of hours later it is evident that they are still moving.

Where are they going? Do they want us to follow them? Is Little Timmy trapped down a well somewhere?

Hang on Timmy! Help is on the way. (Hmm... Slime Moulds move quite slowly, I am afraid Little Timmy is out of luck)

Nevertheless we shall follow it.

I have no idea what species this is but we may be able to find out when it is more fully formed or at least find out something more about it.

So that has been one of the highlights of my day. I am hoping for better weather tomorrow. Until then....

The Vanishing

There has been a slight interruption to our normal service. One of the farm dogs has gone missing.

He hasn't been seen since eleven o'clock on Sunday morning. He has the run of the farm and local footpaths but wears a collar that is supposed to deter him from straying out onto the road.

It is quite common for him to disappear for an hour or so as he has quite a bit of land to run around in but he always comes back and he knows his way home.

So we were out looking for him as it was getting dark yesterday and this morning Mighty Mouse and I will be doing some house to house enquiries. Obviously his owners are doing everything that they can to find him too.

His owner lost a new puppy just a couple of weeks ago in a horrible car accident and she can't be losing another one so soon. That would not be fair, so we have just got to find him.

Quite often if something happens on a Sunday it doesn't get reported till the Monday  morning and hopefully we will track him down quickly today. (he is microchipped)

We have good stuff to blog. One of my pet sticks has been baffling the boffins and I have found a truly beautiful Spindle tree. I know that we have only just done Spindle but this one still has dark green leaves and it is set off by a golden Oak just behind it. Also we still need to get the Honey Mushroom's bootlaces and other stuff. First we have to find Buddy.

Normal service will resume shortly.

12:30 Update: Buddy has been found safe and well. Fizz and I went out and searched in the mud for him. He wasn't  in the mud but we had some fun looking. He had got himself locked in a shed on one of the neighbouring farms. Silly Dog :)

A Guelder Rose but no Gorillas.

We had to revise our plan for today. It was a bit misty.

It just seemed too dangerous to take Fizz out on the road, we could get knocked over and traumatise a motorist.

There was a little dog sitting underneath my window who wanted me to come out and play..

Plan B then. The fog was coming down heavy. We would go and look for Gorillas in the mist (that's where they live. Right?)

I put Fizz in charge of watching the trees, we don't want anything jumping down on us and I was in charge of the little things.

The first little thing that I found was rose hips, from a proper rose a Dog Rose.

But not all of those berries are tasty rose hips, some of them are Black Bryony.

We are going to see a lot of berries today.

Hawthorn berries are everywhere.

This next little mushroom is one of the Mycena. That is a genus of fungi with several hundred species. Many of which can only be separated with a microscope. I can't get it to species from these pictures but it is a pretty one. These are often collectively referred to as Bonnets.

Keep watching the trees please!

I am bent over examining the ground and at any moment something big might jump down and land on my back with a thump. What's my lookout doing?

Messing about! Although, I am not sure how much she can see out of her haircut anyway.

There are many more berries to come. These are Black Bryony again. The profusion of these poisonous berries delights me.

All around I am seeing signs of winter. These Ivy berries will be a feature of January when they have ripened.

Lambs Tails are forming on the Hazel ready for January too.

Behind these catkins is the plant that we have come to see.

I first photographed these berries in January, there were far fewer berries then and there were no leaves on the tree. I didn't know what it was and so I told myself that I would come and look at it in the summer and then I forgot.

This time we have leaves.

These are the fruits of the Guelder Rose, Viburnum opulus.

It is a member of the Adoxaceae family. That means that it is related more closely to the Elder tree and the lovely little Town Hall Clock than to the roses.

Well, I have missed the green leaves of summer and the white flowers that would have bloomed in June but at least we have got the berries and we know what it is.

These actually look like they must be related to Elderberries, don't you think?

This post just goes on and on, I just want to show you one more thing and then we will head back.

We are right at the end of Badger Alley now and this is where I think that the Beast of Badger Alley lives. On one side of the track there is woodland.

On the other side of the track there is impenetrable scrub. This is a tangle of Brambles, Hawthorn, Blackthorn anything with thorns on it.

Last winter I tried to press into this scrub, just a little bit to photograph some bright rose hips and as I went in an animal was startled and went crashing deeper into the bush. It was making more noise than me, it was big. Not a Fox, it was the Beast of Badger Alley but I didn't see it, I only heard it moving.

Okay we had better hurry back now.

Just ignore the pretty little bird. It is just guarding it's territory.

 I
 took loads of pictures of this Common Hogweed but we will rush past this one as well.

And the last thing that we won't look at will be little Herb Robert.

That's it. We were out for ages and we still didn't see a Gorilla. Maybe Fizz scared them all off.

I was going to show you how muddy she was when I dropped her off but you can probably guess.

17/11 Update: We received a tip off from the very kind Mar'yana Svarnyk in the comments section, advising us to take a look at the beautiful red seeds of the Guelder Rose. Thank you so much. (These pictures will be in my upcoming post, "The hunt for Red November" but also here for anyone searching for Guelder Rose)

Take care when extracting the seeds, I recommend wearing eye protection. The fruits are very juicy.