First Slime Mold of the Season, 12-03-19

Start Time: 7:30 am
Start Temperature: 54ºF
End Temperature: 61º F
Weather: Overcast, no rain
Total Hours in the field (includes travel time): 4 hours
Miles Walked: 3.5
Number of Individual Species Noted Today: 47

I got up around 7:30 am and headed out to the Effie Yeaw Nature Preserve. I REALLY needed to get outside and walk. My car, Vincenzo, is still in the shop today, so Melissa let me borrow her car. It was 54º at the river and overcast. The cloud cover all day but we didn’t get any rain.

I only got periodic glimpses of the deer at the preserve, but there were a lot of different bird species around, the lichens were all fluffed up from the rains, and the fungi are starting to make an appearance like the crust fungi, jelly fungi and some spent Barometer Earthstars,

CLICK HERE for the full album of photos.

I get excited about weird things… like the first slime mold sighting of the season! Woo-hoo! I found a small specimen of Red Tube Slime Mold (Stemonitis fusca), also called Brown Tube Slime Mold or “Birthday Cake”. It starts out pure white, then the tubes lengthen and stand up on threads and the whole group turns red or pink or burgundy. Then as the mass goes to spore, it all turns brown and disintegrates into “dust”. ((The “Birthday Cake” variation of this slime mold retains light-colored tops of each of the stems, so it looks like frosting on top of a Red Velvet cake.)) You can see a video of how this slime mold forms at: https://youtu.be/A0__v5nMGaI

I saw a lot of evidence of mole activity on and around the trails, and one spot where it looked like a coyote had dug into the ground trying to get one of them.

I also found a Jerusalem Cricket in one of the puddles on the trail. It was dead, drowned, and I wondered if it had been driven there by Horsehair Worm parasites. I took photos of the cricket but didn’t cut it open to see if there were any worms in its brain or body.

In the river I tracked a huge, well-traveled, worn out Chinook Salmon in the shallows along the bank. There were gulls and Turkey Vultures sitting along the river waiting for the fish to die.