Earlier this week I went for a short walk around part of the Sussex Weald to see if any mushrooms had popped up. We’ve experienced one of the driest springs on record and the warmest June for England, as well as three heatwaves already! Me and mushrooms don’t need three heatwaves, thanks.
Mushrooms need rain, warmth and moisture to thrive, and after a downpour earlier in the day I thought it might be worth having a look. Here’s what happened:
At the beginning you can hear my water bottle in my bag and a great spotted woodpecker ‘kicking’
I began in the presence of Bambi, or a fallow deer
It’s been a very busy summer so far for me of working and commuting. I had a free afternoon and so headed to my local dreamspace, but with no mushrooms on the mind – literally or figuratively.
Red admiral (phone pic)
The number of butterflies was remarkable, perhaps the sense of doom about 2023’s poor invertebrate spring had dampened my expectations too much. There were red admirals, skippers, whites of course, and even a white admiral on the sandy track. White admiral is something I don’t see that often, mainly because I lived in London for so long. Then again, it is cropping up in SE London now, which is interesting.
I was enjoying the sense of a butterfly summer, when I nearly spilled my invisible coffee at the sight of a deep red mushroom on the edge of the track.
Mushrooms, so abrupt, unapologetic. They know how welcome they are, even if you don’t realise it yourself at the time.
This was one of the summery, colourful boletes that can be found at this time of year. It’s probably a neoboletus, but my iNaturalist record is without community input and I haven’t had the time to do any research myself. So it remains an unknown jewel.
A few paces away was a more common and typical summer shroom, what I would guess is a blusher.
This short walk on the edge of the High Weald was notable for its green-ness, surely close to peaking as August nears.
We’re lucky over here that we aren’t experiencing the mega burns and record high temperatures of Greece, Italy and Arizona. You have to wonder how some of our fungi will cope with the drought and the impact on our woods. No doubt fungi will outlive humans in the long, long run (they can survive and thrive in nuclear reactors) but the heat can’t be good for the health of our woods which may struggle to adapt to pace and intensity of change.
When are we going to see serious action on climate, rather than flip-flopping by both major political parties? The kind of urgency we saw in crisis-managing COVID-19? Am I destined to see meaningful environmental policy remain as a marginal ideal in my lifetime?
No doubt fungi will rise into conservation thinking beyond the obsession with bringing back questionable, extinct species. But will that be too late as the heat rises and the woods burn?
Fungi, ever-resilient, have been found to benefit from burning in Australia, but of course that is just a handful of species.
It would be foolish no to follow one of the key messages fungi can teach us: don’t forget the present, you never know what might pop up.
Pulborough Brooks, West Sussex, Friday 16th December 2022
I arrived at Pulborough Brooks as the sun began to rise over Wiggonholt, the heath on the hill.
There are five pine trees that stand together in the open heath, I always seek them out in this light.
Frost encrusted everything where the sun was yet to reach. Young birches were thick with hoar frost, the yellow leaves of oaks held an edge of ice flakes.
There was little to hear, so much so that even a goldcrest moving through brambles made a sound.
Further round the hill the Highland Cattle were grazing among the frozen bracken. They looked so at home in their Viking get-up, heavy coats whitened by the temperatures. At 8am it was -5.
Out onto the reserve a winter landscape opened out: rock-hard fields with a herd of deer making a break for it; frozen ponds and lakes without ducks and wading birds; and in the distance the South Downs almost hidden by a rising mist.
Here’s my seasonal update of stuff you don’t need to know about, but then welcome to the Internet. What I’m writing Soon I will be self-publishing my third poetry collection, Fool’s Wood. It’s seven years since my last one and this collection has taken longer because of LIFE. There will be a booklet and also…
Here’s another entry in my slow-blogging Oak Timbers series. You can view my galleries and posts archive here. I visited Salisbury in Wiltshire (south-west England) for the first time in 2023 and was really charmed by the place. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, Salisbury is the place for you. Here’s a gallery…
I’m getting into more of a routine of recording and editing audio, so here is the latest episode of Unlocking Landscapes. Listen on Podbean or via the usual platforms. Also via YouTube: https://youtu.be/y1K9Pqx68to?si=B-Fdhf3sdDH35Z8w Following on from July’s rather optimistic fungi walk, I popped back to the same area of ancient Wealden woodland to see if…
Last week I went for a walk in rather grey and glowery weather. It was in hope of seeing some earlier spring signs but was more a reminder that winter persists.
I found a small collection of glistening inkcaps, along with one of my favourite large brackets. Those are pictured here with my hand for scale.
Otherwise there were some small polypores (probably turkey tail) and a few lichens that had been enriched by recent rain.
Life is rather full-on at the moment so I’m not finding the time or energy to write something longer or more detailed. It’s also a mental thing, just don’t have a lot to say. Photography will be the focus in posts for a little while.
One morning recently, I spent a couple of hours wandering around my local tract of the Sussex Weald. The bracken and beech were glowing as the sun edged its way up through trees. The sun had blown the world wide open. After a personal self-imposed Omicron lockdown to protect a significant event, it felt like the sun had ripped up that anxious feeling of being locked away. Life was in full flow:
Sun rising, melting the frost and ice in the woods. Winter bird flocks – blue tit, nuthatch, siskin, lesser redpoll. Great spotted woodpecker hammering to mark out its territory. The chirp of a skylark passing over the canopy, perhaps on migration, maybe heading to the South Downs.The hollow sound of the M23 and aeroplanes connected to nearby Gatwick. The strategic calls of crows. A jay screeching. Gunshots pop beyond the woods.
The light in January and February appears at a fairly sociable hour, and after frost the landscape glistens even more. At this time I seek out beech leaves, with their patchworks of fading cells and arrowing veins.
I was using my 12-100mm f4 zoom lens, with more a mind for landscapes, when I spotted this bracken frond dangling down with a droplet of water at its tip. The sun was creeping up through the pines in the distance. The melting frost in its path upon reaching the bracken providing the lush bokeh circles that bed the image down.
I read recently that the photons of sunlight that touch our skin take 200,000 years to travel from the sun itself. That’s around the time that our ancient Homo sapiens ancestors were evolving. So often we can barely see weeks or months ahead when the world we live in is so ancient in its making, it can feel impossible to comprehend. Taking the time to stop and think about it makes life so much richer.
Mid-August: the woods sit between seasons. Leaves are not yet turning, the soil is dry and the leaf litter brittle. Even so, mushrooms are pushing through. I turn off the hard track to cross over the ghyll that cuts through the woodland, one of many dammed further down for the ancient iron industries that hammered this landscape several centuries ago.
Today no such industry exists but the streams still flow. In fact, from this area of the High Weald, some of Sussex’s great rivers rise and head off on their respective journeys: the Arun, the Adur and the Ouse.
Sitting on the bank, I notice fungi on fallen wood but also in the soil. They are terracotta hedgehogs, mushrooms with spikes where the gills or pores are found on other species. They’re a delicious edible mushroom.
When the iron industries were at full pelt here some 400-500 years ago, there was immigration of skilled workers from France. They brought knowledge unavailable to iron workers here in Sussex, with some tensions developing with the local workforce. On 21st January 1556, ‘Peter’ a French collier was ‘cruelly murdered’ (Weir-Wilson, 2021: p.45).
I wonder if those French men and women picked hedgehogs here, a species that’s treated as a delicacy in France. The Belgian father of a friend of mine messaged me on social media when I posted a photo of these mushrooms:
‘Pied de mouton,’ he said. ‘Clean then blanch them for 2min. Drain and keep. Fry 2 shallots and 1 garlic in butter (or oil). Butter tastes better.’
Deeper into the woodland there are the first signs of heather beginning to flower. The birdsong has dwindled but the edges of the rides burst with flowers that are covered in insects. A broken and battered fritillary butterfly nectars on hemp agrimony flowers as if for the first time. I watch to see if a butterfly with so many pecks taken from its wings can even fly, but it does, high into the overcast sky.
Further along the ride hogweed has built a great white canopy. The droneflies – a honeybee mimic – drink nectar in their tens, fizzing as they switch from one umbel to another. That’s when I notice the long, drooping antennae of a longhorn beetle, doing the very same thing. I can’t take my eyes from it, as it clambers over the small inflorescences.
After walking along the endless forestry road, I slip back into the woodland to an area of birchy bog and broken beeches. It’s quiet and still in here. Unlike the final bursts of summer flowers on the open forest rides, autumn can be found among the birch trees.
First there is a bolete with its pores and cap that has begun to turn upwards, growing from a stump. There’s a Leccinum or birch bolete of some sort standing tall (for its kind) in the soil. There are Russulas yellow, red, green and purple. These hard to identify fungi are a mental bridge between summer and autumn. They are also a welcome meal for squirrels and whatever can get there first.
It’s a reminder that the seasons are not concrete. There is give and take, building blocks can come tumbling down. Seasonal signs come with species appearing, some that pass like ships in the night.
A second wave of Covid has thrown us back into lockdown in England. You can only leave the house for essentials and exercise. It’s much harder now that the night falls early and the window on experiencing daylight has narrowed. But the days are lengthening and spring is building in small ways.
At night the foxes are making their blood-curdling cries and other social calls. They are breeding, probably just outside the back door each night.
On clear nights I sit on the edge of the bed and, with lights out, can see stars. The three lights of Orion’s Belt shine bright, but not more so than Sirius to the south-east. It’s the brightest star in the sky.
Out on my exercise for the day, I stand in a frosty glade of bracken. Silver birches are clustered at the edges, ash branches have collapsed and fallen to the ground. Their twigs reveal leafy lichens, in some places known as oak moss. There are real mosses too, little green pin cushions with their sporophytes poised.
The birds are foraging for life in this time of scarcity. A jay moves between trees and shrubs, flushing white wing-bars as it flies. Nuthatches are dripping from the tree trunks in both number and sound. Further away the hooting of two tawny owls ruffles out of the trees, half-baked. Are these early territorial warning signs? Spring, indeed.
Alarm calls break across the branches and bare blue sky. It is a beautiful day. Knowing these alarm calls mean something is happening, I look up at the patch of sky over the clearing. From the north-west two birds fly close to one another, on passage. To identify them will take a process of elimination:
Wings too sharp for sparrowhawk
Too small and direct in flight for buzzard
Too big for merlin
Hobbies are holidaying in Africa
Tail too short for kestrel
They’re peregrine falcons, stars in a different sky. Perhaps they are returning to the South Downs and an early morning hunting pigeons in the towns. Maybe they’re a pair getting to know each other and seeking a place to breed. Wherever they’re going, bit by bit, winter is edging away with them.
The cold has come to the woods, and with it, the silence of birds. It’s not all quiet. Rain has fallen overnight and there is a gushing to the hill as it wends its way through the woodland. Looking at the water I see the bare sandstone. The water, over a very long time, has cut through the soils and softer substrates. Walking here over several years I have wondered why the sandier heathlands rest high up and the ancient woodlands of oak, beech, hazel and holly grow only really in the clay gulleys. It’s here, the answer. The stream has cut through the sand and washed the gravel away to reach the sandstone.
I follow the twisting stream up hill, jumping from bank to bank, where vegetation blocks progress. In a slowed stretch something small and black is moving against the flow on the clay streambed. It’s an invertebrate, what I think is a caddisfly with a pack of debris on its back. It looks to be trying to grab at a small stone or piece of material on the streambed. It could be ready to attach itself to the stone and move to its next stage, the pupa, before becoming an adult insect for a month next year.
Ferns spool out from the freshly leaf-laden banks and the trees are drenched in moss. It dawns on me: this is south-east England’s rainforest.
Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria, June 2025 This is a longer post of the images I captured during a recent visit to Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. We travelled to Innsbruck on a sleeper train from Amsterdam. It’s such a great experience and is significantly lower in carbon emissions compared with flying. If you consider the fact…
I’m back from my annual visit to the west of Ireland. I managed a couple of day trips to forage for photos, which will crystallise later this year into dedicated posts, all being well. Like many people I enjoy the Blind Boy Podcast, none more so when I have the headspace to take in all…
This is the first of a series of posts I’ve been working on covering national relationships with mushrooms. It’s just a bit of fun, but there’s definitely some interesting stuff to share.
The River Arun, Horsham, West Sussex, November 2020
Again we must stay close to home. The oaks are in their orange and gold phase. The bright sun catches in their leaves against blue skies, darkening their grey-black trunks. I stop to look out over the Arun’s water meadows. Two large white Sussex cattle rest on a hillock, doing nothing.
From the mature trees that edge the Arun, a bird swoops down into the rushy grasslands that spread away from the river. I can see from its size and underwing that it’s a buzzard. It returns to a perch in a bare ash tree on the river’s edge. I don’t have binoculars so I can’t see what it has, but it took something. Surely it’s too late for frogs or toads.
A man and a woman approach from behind me to share the view across the river’s wet edgelands. The woman has an orange bin bag and a litter pick.
‘Seen anything good?’ she asks.
I point out the buzzard, that it’s hard to see because it’s so well hidden.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I’ve just seen it because it moved.’
Impressive, but perhaps unsurprising for someone with an eye for litter picking.
I say that I don’t know what it has. She tells me that she only ever sees them soaring but never perched. She and her partner live on the edge of the farm. They see buzzards all the time.
All summer I heard a young buzzard calling from a nest along the river, It was incessant, persistent. Every time I visited I could hear it calling. Then I spotted a huge ash tree and saw it sitting up there, calling still. It was out on a branch, begging to be fed by its parents.
As an exiled Londoner, it feels an intense privilege to be able to walk ten minutes from home and happen upon the breeding ground of this great and prospering hawk. A fellow exile said much the same to me, that he had found buzzards roosting in trees across from his new home in Peterborough.
Our conversation about the buzzard dissolves in that awkward English way, and the couple head off in search of more litter. I stay on, wondering what it is the buzzard is having for its lunch.
I stand on the long, straight track that cuts through the heart of St. Leonard’s Forest. I recently looked for it on a map from the 1870s. I thought it might have been a 20th Century addition to ease forestry operations. To my surprise, it was there cutting through what today remains a heavily wooded landscape.
Looking around, it’s probably even more wooded now. In the 1870s, the woodland was likely oak and beech with holly underneath. Where pines now stand abandoned to nature, heathland probably expanded over more open areas.
The name ‘forest’ actually denotes open land where laws once controlled gathering of natural resources and the hunting of animals, with brutal consequences for rule breakers. ”Aforestation’ was the implementation of Forest Law on more land, often at the expense of entire vilages of people.
At one point in history, a third of England was subject to Forest Law. It was a landscape of oppression, violently enforced by England’s Norman conquerers after 1066. The management and control of deer was a key part of the Norman forest landscape.
The track is endless in this crepuscular light. At the edges ditches are stuffed with bracken which has yellowed in the August heatwave. Sudden explosions of heather interrupt the vertebra-like leaves of the bracken.
Ahead I can see two people or animals. The light is fading, the sun has slipped beyond the pines. As I get closer I can see one is a roe deer. The other figure has gone. The deer are grazing the edges of the ditches, stopping to check on my progress. I’m moving slowly, but hurrying with my hands to change the lens on my little camera to one with more reach. I get closer but it doesn’t fear me. It turns and walks away into the dark woodland.
Walking further down the old track, a pathway, broad and green appears on my left. Two fallow deer are looking at me. They must have been grazing with the calm roe I have just passed, but they are less accepting. They scarper, one zig-zagging and leaping to distract what is a would-be predator.
Then, from the bushes, a roe deer has been startled and lurches across the path into the undergrowth that the fallow deer has disappeared into. Squashed into that small green lane, that burst of animal limbs felt almost like watching a stampede.
Unlocking Landscapes 