Fun guy seen at Sevenoaks NR

On Saturday 5th October I made a return trip to Sevenoaks Nature Reserve with my mum we met my Auntie there. We ate our picnic then donned our walking boots and went out for a stroll around the lakes which we didn't cover last time. Snipe bog lake is the best name for a lake I have come across! We didn't see any snipe though.

I thought I would try and photograph each different type of fungus that we came across. I only had my long lens with me which meant that it was difficult to get a quick shutter speed as well as a lot of the subject in focus. This meant I had to up the ISO quite a bit so the quality of the images aren't that great, but hopefully you get the idea of the variety of fungi we saw. Some I have managed to identify (possibly wrongly) and as I have been a bit pushed for time recently, most are unidentified.

Any expert fungi identifiers out there (or even non-expert) - Please do comment below if I have made any mistakes or if you know what any of my photos are of! Thank you in advance :)

The first type of fungi we encountered was coral spot - however my photo didn't turn out great so haven't included it. I think we probably saw about 20 different species in the space of a couple of hours. Not bad.

Burnt Polypore

Sulphur tuft?

?

Parasola auricoma

Drab bonnet?

?

We stopped at one of the hides for a little coffee flask break and enjoyed watching this lovely male and female mallard paddling around this lake, covered in seed and leaf litter. The only acceptable type of litter. We also watch some huge fish, a few hawkers and just sat and listened to the rustle of autumnal leaves and coots squawking and making odd noises.

We carried on our lake-side partially wooded walk and came across more interesting fungi and a lovely tufty caterpillar.

Same specimen as photo above... Lilac bonnet?

Dusky Puffball

Parasola auricoma and drab bonnets?

Ruby tiger moth caterpillar

Candle snuff fungus

White dapperling??

Physarum album

We came to another hide - one which we knew a kingfisher had been seen from just earlier. We sat. We waited. Not a king to be seen. We watched a few teal sifting through the green-looking water, and large numbers of Canada geese flying to an adjacent field.

Female Teal

Further on we saw great crested grebes and their stripey-headed chicks that were nearly fully grown.

Water mint

An impressive specimen with birch seeds on top for a finishing touch

Various forms of bracket fungi... again if you have any ideas what they are please let me know :)

We also saw a lovely vocal little robin, plenty of lapwings, some tufties and also a number or cormorants.

I had work at the pub that evening and finished about midnight. By the time I had got to sleep it was 1ish. I then had to be up at 6.15 to head out water vole trapping with Chloe, Row and Pete. It was a beautiful dewy morning which resulted in jewelled spiders webs everywhere. In comparison to our trapping session at Elmley, it wasn't great. Only 2 water voles in 50 traps. This just shows how much help these little critters need our help.

Anyway to end this post here are the couple of early morning misty photos I took.

Thanks for reading :) I hope you are all well and have had a great weekend despite the rain. We managed to get out for dog walks in between showers which was lucky.

The next post will show Bracken's new found love for the sea!