Tag: Macro photography

August mushrooms in the New Forest National Park 🐴

Daniel Greenwood3 Comments

New Forest National Park, Hampshire, August 2023

I was in the New Forest National Park camping for a couple of nights in August. The rainy July in southern England gave me great hope of finding some nice shrooms in what is one of England’s mushroom wonderlands. It didn’t disappoint!

Bolete bonanza

I was so happy to find these boletes, one having already been uprooted. They were the perfect shape and just an absolute joy to see. I have been told these are ceps, but I’m not entirely sure if they’re not another species. I’m unclear on the variety among cep-like boletes, and if the colouring isn’t indicative of another species.

These lovely yellow-pored boletes are in the genus Xerocomus.

About half a mile or less away we found this beauty sitting alone among the grass and leaf litter. It’s an orange bolete. It doesn’t appear to have a distinct association with one species of tree, but this area was common in oak and birch.

Much later that day, on the return stretch, we found this well-camouflaged group of what I am sure are ceps due to their colouring and other diagnostic features.

You can see the distinctive webbing on the stipe here, and the pennybun cap is all you need really:

As the evening drew in, I found this orange bolete that may have been picked by a deer (there was a herd in the area).

Webcaps

Earlier in the day, while passing between two plantations on a grassy ride, I noticed this uprooted mushroom on the ground. Two bites had been taken from it, probably by deer or a small mammal. The remnants of the veil between the cap and stipe, covering the gills, gave me the thought that this was a webcap. The gills were very beautiful, embellished by the water droplets.

iNaturalist has come back with an ID of webcap subsect ‘Purpurascentes‘. I can’t find any other info on the subgroup distinction.

Rustgills

Rustgills are a group I’m not particularly familiar with. Having developed my fungi knowledge in isolated city woodlands, I didn’t really see rustgills until I moved to Sussex and spent time in larger areas of woodland. This patch was unavoidable. No wonder there is a species known as the spectacular rustgill.

Rustgills are in the genus Gymnophilus. They’re confusable with scalycaps (Stropharia) due to shape and colour.

Chantarelles

And finally some golden chantarelles, already nibbled by slugs and uprooted, probably by deer (as I have said 1000 times in this post!).

The New Forest has a “no pick” policy and there are concerns about illegal, commercial-scale picking for posh restaurants, just FYI. All of these mushrooms had already been “naturally” uprooted (probably by deer).

Thanks for reading.

Fungi

Fungi: Bedgebury Pinetum – one of the best places for fungi in England? 🌲

Daniel Greenwood3 Comments

Bedgebury Pinetum, Kent, September 2023

Disclaimer: this blog is now riding high in the search engines under the tag ‘Kent Fungi’ (not sure why, to be honest). On the back of this Forestry England contacted me to ask for me to point out to any readers that foraging is an offence, or more specifically:

‘Bedgebury Pinetum is protected by Forestry Commission bylaws that prohibit the damage or removal of any plant on site.’

While this is a photography and mycology post and not a foraging blog, it’s important that if you do go looking for fungi at Bedgebury that you don’t get caught out. Regardless of the fact that fungi are not plants, I think that byelaw must include fungi for some taxonomically archaic reason. I’ve written about this wider issue here. Thanks.

I visited Bedgebury Pinetum in Kent for the first time in early September 2023. It was impressive to see a noticeboard highlighting the Pinetum as one of ‘the best places for fungi in the country’!

Here’s the proof:

It has 12,000 specimen trees and a ‘world-leading collection of conifers’

Tell you what, though – they were not wrong about the dragonflies. The most impressive sight of the visit was dragonflies swarming on the margins of a field of, erm, monkey puzzles! Here’s the video:

It was dry and rather hot so I don’t think the Pinetum was at its best in the funga stakes, compared with the dragons.

As usual, I wasn’t there to forage, just to photograph. I don’t think Forestry England are fans of foraging on their sites. One of the first sightings of the visit was that common species in this part of the world – sulphur tuft.

I haven’t seen brick or conifer tuft yet, to my knowledge, so was wondering if this landscape where conifers were so dominant might change that. Looking at the gills and the caps, I don’t think I’m there yet.

Here’s the nice early stages of a bracket, which I haven’t identified yet. Might be a mazegill.

Tawny grisette is a lovely early Amanita. There were a couple at Bedgebury.

I have cobbled these together, even though they’re in different stages. I think they’re in the Clitocybe group, and are very likely funnels. The habitat and seasons are right, and the features look right (gills). It seems that there has been a taxonomic shake-up with this group, but it’s beyond this blogpost (and author!) to go into detail on that. Please comment if you have any suggestions.

It’s easy enough to plop these mushrooms into the ‘dungi’ category, and am confident that they’re mottlegills (Panaeolus). I’m half suspicous that the pale-capped shroom is a yellow fieldcap, rather than a saturated older fruiting body, just hanging out in the dung.

I haven’t done much work on trying to identify these yet, but they look like a group I am not familiar with. They were growing under an unusual type of turkey oak, but I don’t think there will be a mycelial connection there. Then again, what do I know.

So was it one of the best places to see fungi in England? I have no idea, but it will definitely be a good place to visit in the autumn months. Bear in mind the car parking fee is about £14, and I don’t know about public transport links in the area.

Thanks for reading.

This is a version of a previously-published post on my fungi blog.

Fungi

You may also be interested in:

#FungiFriday: 10 miles of mushrooms in the New Forest

Macro: Grisedale robberfly 🏞️

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

I spent a couple of days in the Lake District in July and was indeed blown away by those mighty hills, and the rain.

This very short post is one of lamentation, in truth, seeing as I managed to scare away an interesting insect waiting for its free portraits.


On a walk that crossed through Grisedale (a stunning valley), I passed a gate alongside a lane. I spotted the lingering shape of large insect on the gate’s top rail.


I was so happy to see this, but didn’t contain my excitement enough. Approaching what turned out to be a robberfly, I spooked it and it flew far, far away. It had been so chilled and the lighting was perfect, so I could have got some really nice pics.

Robberflies are predatory flies and are some of the most photogenic insects you can find in the UK. They are also not hugely common which gives them an air of respectability and intrigue.

I told my friend that this had effectively ruined the walk, and nothing could salvage it now.

This was wrong though because Ullswater (above) was just a mile away and we got on a boat which felt like something from Jurassic Park minus the dinosaur threat. But the pain of disturbing that robberfly was real, one must contain oneself next time.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

Hogweed heaven💮

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

West Sussex, July 2023

I’ve been trying to keep my macro photos rolling in the absence of June’s one pic each day. It’s a bit like keeping your lawn growing after No Mow May.

Actually, no, it’s harder because you have to be proactive.

By far the best encounter with the macro world this past week was a patch of hogweed along a footpath by the local river. A cyclist went past me as I was taking these photos – even though it was a footpath – and glared at me as if I was doing something truly evil or dangerous to the public.

I have a bike, too, so if that exercised the cycling community, we’re all friends here on djg.com…

Hogweed is a weird plant, in that it’s part of a family that both kills, but also provides edible plant matter. Its sap is photocorrosive (not as bad as its big brother, giant hogweed) but its flowers are very, very good for pollinators. It can also be a bit invasive because it burgeons in places where nitrogen levels are artificially high (probably dog urine here…) therefore most of England.

A marmalade hoverfly feeding on the hogweed stamens

A soldier beetle also drinking from the carrot fountain

I would say this was maybe an ashy mining bee, but a little faded and low on the ‘ashy’ body hair

Earlier this week I noticed an ichneumon wasp exploring the raspberry patch in my garden. It was pausing to use its ovipositor on the curled up leaf – presumably the work of some other organism creating a sort of cocoon. I love them!

Thanks for reading

Macro | Ichneumon wasps

#30DaysMacro 2023: final week!

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

Here we are, another June slipping away and with it another #30DaysWild. Thankfully the humidity has dissipated this week and it’s been more comfortable to spend time outside (for me).

The final week of another June #30DaysMacro challenge, here we go:

Day 22/30: leaving my mum’s house in SE London I noticed this yellow shell moth on the frosted glass. iNaturalist helped me with the identification.

Day 23/30: the zebra jumping spiders have been absent for me this spring but I am noticing them now. This little charmer was in the garden hedge.

Day 24/30: there have been a new range of bees arriving in my garden as the spring plants shift to summer flowers. The birds-foot trefoil has attracted leafcutter bees like the one above. They have an unusual flight, almost like a kind of hover.

Day 25/30: this was a day of weekend working and several hours travelling, so I had to make do with taking photos in my garden at dusk. I used the built-in flash in the Olympus TG-6 and wasn’t enamoured with the results, mainly because the flash isn’t softened by a diffuser. This mirid bug is out of focus but I enjoy its colours.

Day 26/30: the insect populations seem to be greater now that summer has arrived. Going out of the house first thing has been a good chance to see the range of hoverflies and other bees. This hover was doing that odd leg cleaning ritual and I managed to catch it with ‘legs akimbo’!

Day 27/30: at last a good show from the wool carder bees. I’ve written about these wonderful bees before – if you want to attract them get yourself some lamb’s ear (not literally), also sold as ‘stachys’.

Day 28/30: an evening foray in my mum’s garden late into the evening, in cooler weather. I spotted this mirid bug climbing over the flowers of a snowberry.

Day 29/30: in SE London I found this grasshopper nibbling away on a grass blade. It was far smaller than the photo suggests. The grass was blowing in the breeze which made the focus a bit difficult to pin down, so it’s not the sharpest picture here.

Day 30/30: and so to the final day, one of the few rainy days in June. I was out on the South Downs for a walk and found this pyramidal orchid growing in a laneside verge. A beautiful plant of chalk grassland reaching its peak.

Thanks for reading!

Macro

#30DaysMacro 2023: week three

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

Here we are, week three of #30DaysMacro as part of #30DaysWild. This week, things took a fungal turn after thunderstorms burst onto the scene.

Day 15/30: a bumblebee feeding on purple loosestrife in a car park in West Sussex. I took two photos all day on the 15th, and this was one of them!

Day 16/30: another day where photo opps were scarce, but I saw this little solitary bee (maybe a Colletes?) on the oxeye daisies in my garden. These daisies have been a massive boost to invert life in my garden this year.

Day 17/30: this photo made me laugh – a meadow brown butterfly on common knapweed in a Wealden meadow in West Sussex. I didn’t notice the green swollen-thighed beetle hanging out below until I put the photo through Lightroom!

Day 18/30: storms have been the only source of rain recently, and they have been incredibly powerful. After some of that rain, I went looking for some life in the garden and found a common planthopper with a little droplet on their head. I see this as pushing the camera (Olympus Tough TG-6 compact) to the extreme due to lack of light and small size of the subject, and the results are great (though cropped and edited in Lightroom).

Day 19/30: on a lunchtime walk to stretch my legs I found this ashy mining bee foraging from one of the umbellifers that grow alongside my local river.

Day 20/30: things took a turn for the fungal on the 20th, as the rain gave a much-needed drink to the thirsty lichens in my local churchyard.

Day 21/30: the first of the summer/early autumn mushrooms, spindleshank, growing in the place where I learned what they are at Sydenham Hill Wood.

Thanks for reading!

Macro

#30DaysMacro 2023: week two

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

Welcome to the second week of my #30DaysWild macro photo challenge which I call #30DaysMacro. All photos here are taken with an Olympus TG-6 Tough compact camera and cropped/tweaked in Lightroom.

This week was another hot and dry one, and possibly showed a bit more of an increase in insect numbers after a worryingly scant spring. These photos were taken in London and West Sussex, and both areas are in desperate need of rain.

Day 8/30: shield bugs (known as stinkbugs in North America) are some of the most charismatic insects out there and easiest to see. These two cabbage bugs were mating in what I reckon is a plant in the cabbage family, in south-east London. I think this is my first sighting of them.

Day 9/30: this photo is part of an experience that will benefit from a dedicated post. This is a red-belted clearwing moth laying eggs in a diseased or cankered apple tree in a residential road in West Sussex. It’s only one of maybe three clearwings I’ve ever encountered and you can see that it’s a really extravagant, day-flying species. Maybe I could be swayed by moths after all. Scroll down for another part of this story.

Day 10/30: a click beetle takes flight from a flowering climber in my small hedge. This click beetle is one that I think is common as I’ve seen one very similar on several occasions. Probably need to upload it to iNaturalist to identify it.

Day 11/30: a tangled web for this poor red admiral in West Sussex. I was surprised to see one so still in the hedge but on closer inspection it has been caught by a spider.

Day 12/30: the emerging larvae of the clearwing can be seen here, pressing out of the apple tree’s bark, just like in certain sci-fi movies. The plot twist here is the arrival of an ichneumon seeking out red-belted clearwing larvae. The ichneumon’s epic ovipositor will be used to lay eggs in the unsuspecting larvae and parasitise the host. You can read more a blog post I wrote about that here.

Day 13/30: a busy day working from home (yes there is such a thing) left me pressed for time, but I managed to snap one of the common hoverflies in my garden. I don’t go out for long in the hottest parts of the day so I am usually reliant on the early mornings or evenings for macro encounters.

Day 14/30: a difficult week for red admirals, with this much-pecked butterfly enjoying(?) some evening rays. You have to make do with what you have in this life.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

#30DaysMacro 2023: week one

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

Happy #30DaysWild! As per the last couple of years I’ll be taking a macro photo – an image greater than 1:1 lifesize magnification – every day in June. I call it #30DaysMacro.

This is one of the best times to look for invertebrate life, and is a nice motivation to get outside, and to share your experiences with others.

The difference for me this year is that I’ll try to take each photo exclusively from a compact camera or my phone. I recently traded in some equipment that was gathering dust and got an Olympus TG-6 Tough compact camera. It’s waterproof, can withstanding being crushed somewhat, but more importantly it has the best macro capabilities available in a compact camera. It will be interesting to see what I can get from it.

Another #30DaysMacro – let’s go! on y va! vamos!

Day 1/30: I had actually forgotten it was June (been busy) and wasn’t thinking of #30DaysWild until after I took this phone pic. The spider was on the rear windscreen wiper of my car in the supermarket car park. It’s one of the running crab spiders.

Day 2/30: a bumblebee with full pollen sacks gathering nectar from the deep flowerheads of yellow flag iris in my small pond.

Day 3/30: a swollen-thighed beetle ‘enters the ring’, the nectar station of an oxeye daisy. I planted these last year and they’ve only flowered in the past few weeks. The small insects on the edges are carpet beetles. They’re there all the time.

Day 4/30: I found this beautiful red cardinal beetle in my family’s garden in SE London, as it rested in the shade of a hazel bush.

Day 5/30: I was lurking around the borders of my garden where the foxgloves grow, waiting for bumblebees to emerge from the flowers. Luckily this bumblebee chose to hover for a while so my camera could lock on and get the in-flight pics. Impressive for such a little camera!

Day 6/30: in the centre of my town there’s a brick wall that is covered in trailing bellflower. At this time of year it catches the sun wonderfully. I took this photo along the main road and was stopped by a woman who said she often tried to get a similar photo on her way home. Trailing bellflower is native to south-eastern Europe and likes rocky places, brightening dull civic spaces.

Day 7/30: a tortrix micro-moth in Peckham, SE London. I really like the holes in the leaves that surround the moth, and its bluey scales.

Thanks for reading, see you next week!

Macro

A spring epistrophe? 🐝

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

Another week of some sun, some showers, and some temperatures that got close to freezing. That sentence may turn out to be a spring epistrophe, but more of that later. In Scotland it reached as low as -5C. April 2023 has been a mishmash of seasons. Here’s what I encountered in my garden on 22nd April.

One of the joys of this time of year has to be the red mason bee. They are tricky to catch up with sometimes away from their bee boxes, but I managed to get close enough to this red-haired male in the skimmia hedge.

This is a mining bee that I can recall seeing each year early in the season. I’m not sure of the species, but it has a likeness to the chocolate mining bee.

I tried with this rather slender-shaped mining bee, but it didn’t like Homo sapiens approaching with a camera and macro lens, however small that equipment is nowadays.

He’s not quite in focus but this hairy-footed flower bee stopped for a snap. Never mind his hairy feet, look at those legs! They do look a bit like tiny Highland cows to me.

To finish this week’s post, I noticed this medium-sized hoverfly in the skimmia. Putting it on iNaturalist I received a quick response, identifying it as spring epistrophe. It has a huge range, from Sweden to northern Spain, and then as far as Ireland to the Caucasus (Russia). Its name obviously means it’s a spring arrival, but ‘epistrophe’: “repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect” – via Miriam-Webster.

I’ll have to listen to the hoverfly more closely next time.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

What this hoverfly doesn’t know 🐝

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

This time of year will probably always remind me of 2020, when most people were entering into Covid-19 ‘lockdowns’. That spring was early, warm and sunny in SE England, which seemed to contrast with the extreme anxiety of the situation we found ourselves in over here. As the lyric in ‘Someone Great’ by LCD Soundsytem goes, ‘the worst is all the lovely weather‘.

This spring feels different: later than recent early seasons, wet, cool but also quite hot. On Monday I got a bit of sunburn on my neck (despite wearing suncream) and on Tuesday it was quite cold in comparison. This all affects wildlife in a far more immediate way.

On Sunday 16th April my garden thermometer (kept in the shade, don’t worry) read 16C, and the garden was alive. Here’s what I found in the space of about half an hour.

My first find is not actually pictured here. I was about to clean the kitchen hob when I noticed a small deceased insect on it, what turned out to be a lovely male red mason bee. I was surprised and a bit annoyed, so went outside to put its tiny little body into the flowerbed where its cousins were zipping around.

Nearby, I noticed my first bee-fly of the year, doing their usual flowerbed hovering. You can see from the image above why this fly is sometimes referred to as the ‘dark-edged’ bee-fly.

There were a large number of drone-flies in and around the Japanese skimmia that makes up much of the hedgeline in my small garden. I’m actually a big fan of this shrub, which provides excellent cover for invertebrates and seems to be a solid nectar source.

I’ve not seen any birds eating its berries which are held for a long time. I would pick this over the dreaded cherry laurel any day.

This is a common hoverfly, which I have come to know as ‘the footballer’ but is also called ‘sun fly‘. Their mimicry is to fool us predators into thinking they’re wasps and therefore able to sting. What this fly doesn’t know is that I’ve read books and have iNaturalist so I know it’s a hoverfly.

Meanwhile, there was quite a bit of activity from the wasps, with two or more queens busy in the skimmia. This queen was less busy so I could get a photo of her basking. To any new readers, I’m a wasp supporter, and I don’t mean the rugby team.

I have another non-native shrub that is proving itself to be a valuable resource for pollinators in my garden. This has flowered for the first time since it was planted three years ago.

This is probably a the black garden ant. I hadn’t seen them nectaring like this before. I’d also seen red mason bees visiting these flowers, which is great news as it’s providing another source of forage for a wider range of pollinators.

This ant was definitely getting stuck in to the nectar on offer here!

On my recycling bin I spotted this green shield bug, a fairly common sight in my garden. They are lovely insects but are also known as stinkbugs in North America because of their pungent scent that is deployed when they’re in trouble.

The hawthorn was in full leaf. I have since coppiced this hawthorn sapling to allow it to form more of a hedge, compared to the spindly tree it was forming.

Hazel is also in leaf. I love their small leaves when first appearing. You can see where I topped this sapling last year. I have also recoppiced it since to form a hedge.

The dog violets are flowering between the brickwork on the twitten (a Sussex name for a type of path).

So too were the pea flowers of what I think is broom. It didn’t flower last year for some reason.

I think this close up helps to show how nice herb robert flowers are up close, with the yellow pollen grains highlighting their attractiveness to bees in particular.

Thanks for reading.

Macro