It was overcast all day today, but no rain to speak of.  I got up around 7:30 am and headed out with the dog to the American River Bend Park to see if any mushrooms or fungus had woken up there yet.  We saw a lot of the more common mushrooms like Japanese Parasols (Parasola plicatilis), Golden Waxy Caps (Hygrophorus flavescens), reddish-orange Bell Omphalina (Xeromphalina campanella),and Sheathed Woodtuft (Kuehneromyces mutabilis)… and lots of lichens, a big polypore fungus, and some jelly fungus.  The best “catch of the day”, though, was a stump with two different kinds of slime mold growing on it: White Finger Slime Mold (Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa ) and Wolf’s Milk Slime Mold (Lycogala epidendrum).  There were several stages of the White Finger including brilliant white and shiny black stages.  The Wolf’s Milk was in its early bright pink stage.  I’d seen the Wolf’s Milk before, but had never seen the White Fingers before — and had never seen two distinctly different molds growing so close to each other.  I think I took about 20 photos of just those two.  Hah!

While we were walking we caught glimpses of deer and jack rabbits, but they moved too quickly for me to get any decent photos of them.  I did get some pictures of birds, though, including a Scrub Jay, several Cedar Waxwings, and a Flicker… So, it was a good walk.  I enjoyed it a lot.