stories

Fungi forage

A glorious autumn morning, sun shining, blue sky and 20 degrees – feels like the summer we never had so better get out and enjoy while it lasts. Thinking of beams of light through the forest shining onto golden autumn leaves and fungi shots, probably need a flash & macro so decanted the lowepro of superficious stuff to make room for them and off to the Heather Hills woods in Little Baddow.

Parked up on roadside, loaded up with 11 kg of bag & tripod and yomped off up the track into the woods. It was wonderful meandering around the tracks but the mature trees' leaves are still a week or two away from turning coloured so I concentrated on searching for fungi – but after an hour still hadn’t found any suitably pristine subjects and made my way back to the car after getting lost down several dead end tracks (mental note, bring satmap nav next time)

Drove off to Galleywood Common woods which I know has lots of dead wood and therefore hopefully more chance of some good fungi. Parked up in the car park and set off up the old horse racing course and into the woods

The ground in these woods is a lot more shaded & wetter than the other and so in theory should be perfect for mushrooms but after a half hour wandering around I was still struggling to find anything good, so I decided to go “off piste” and search in the jungle undergrowth areas which proved a good tactic because soon came across a bunch of mushrooms / toadstools basking in the dappled sunlight and got a few nice shots

Freshly inspired I continued hacking around in the jungle and came across another nest of lovely fungi in the sunlight growing out of some dead beech wood, got some nice shots but for the perfect shot needed a ladder for the lovely set above my head

On a roll now, I discovered that if an area of the woods looks impossible to traverse it’s the best for pristine undisturbed subjects albeit at the cost of a few bramble scratches & nettle stings and soon discovered a small site of lovely red top jobbies that were rotten but looks like more are forming so will be going back for them in the next few weeks armed with a machete

Manoeuvring carefully through the jungle I had to limbo under a fallen branch and just as my head was going under the branch I noticed a perfect mini mushroom growing in the branch and just had to capture it (used the flash with off camera cord) probably my favourite pic of the day.