MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE WEST HYLEBOS WETLAND!
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Beautiful Mid-December Surprises
I apologize for my lengthy absence, as well as my failure to produce the promised blog on sorting fungi by appearance. More likely than not, there will be more lengthy absences coming up in the near future due to circumstances beyond my control. I'd just started working on the sorting fungi by appearance blog when my computer reported the fact that I could not continue because I had zero memory left on my hard drive. Zero memory! How could that possibly be? I just got this computer last Christmas and it was brand new! That night, I contacted my son-in-law and told him what my computer had said, asking him what I should do. He reacted the same way I had when I first received the message. That's impossible, something else must be wrong! Well, I do have a lot of photographs, said I. That can't be the problem, he said, even if you have huge photograph albums, you'd have to have tens of thousands of photographs in order to use up the memory in your hard drive. Ahhhhh, mumbled I, I could very well have photographs numbering at least several tens of thousands. No way! Yes, way! At this point he promised me that he'd get back to me in several days, when we both had time to work on it, and he'd see if he could free up some memory for me. Several days later, we began working on the problem. Several hours later, he said he had very bad news, I actually had zero memory left on my hard drive. Since this is a family friendly blog, let's just say that I replied, "Oh, darn, golly gee, I'm so sad!"
Since then, I've spent many days trying a variety of things in order to free up some memory and not had any success. My photos are like my children. I worked hard for them and don't want to give them up. I tried to reason with myself, but it was difficult, at best. Reason tells me that I really don't need to keep 150 photographs of mallards on my computer, just because I took them, doesn't mean I need to keep them. What I need to do is cull my photographs, only keep the best of the best and what I might reasonably need in my photo library with which to produce blogs. That was a dreadful prospect and one that I wasn't quite ready to deal with. In the end, I had to face facts, bite the bullet, and get to work. I've been hard at work culling photographs over the past two days and think I have enough memory freed up to allow me to post a short park blog, although not nearly enough to tackle a massive blog such as the fungi blog. Although I haven't been able to blog for the past several weeks, I have gotten out to visit the park. I warn you, though, this is going to be a very short blog, as I have no idea how much memory I have to work with. Fasten your seatbelts and hold onto your seat cushions, I may end up crashing this thing again! Ready? And...., we're off!
Whew! It took me three tries in order to get this photo to attach itself to the blog. Sigh! One of the first things I saw when I started down the boardwalk on the 16th was a quick flash of orange high in a tree. I immediately assumed that it was a robin and told myself that if I never took another robin photograph as long as I lived, I'd still have too many robin photographs, so didn't even bother to raise my camera. A few seconds later, I spotted the orange flash again, but this time I realized that it wasn't a robin at all, but a beautiful varied thrush that was busy picking berries off of the tree and gobbling them up. I'm so glad that I stayed around for a couple of minutes, rather than just deciding it was another robin and continuing down the boardwalk.
This has really been a great week for birding. Not only did I spot the beautiful orange varied thrush, but I also spotted huge, handsome, raptors. This red-tailed hawk was so beautiful that he took my breath away! I was doubly blessed with this sighting because I not only got to photograph his beautiful plumage from the front....
but, also from the back. Can you see the gorgeous copper color of his tail-feathers?
On the 18th, this gorgeous bald eagle was sitting in the very same place that the red-tailed hawk had been sitting in before. This branch must be a particularly lucrative place from which to spot prey.
Look what's back again......the Deep Sinks! I sent both the City of Federal Way Parks Department and EarthCorps emails gauging the possibility of removing the fallen trees from over the Deep Sinks so that visitors could see the water again. I never received a reply to either email, so I don't know who did this, but was absolutely delighted to discover that the water was visible once more. This is a favorite viewing spot for park visitors and I'd gotten more complaints about the fallen trees in this location than any other problem in the park. I don't know who cleared the trees, but thank you very much! Your hard work is very much appreciated. Kudos to you!
At this point, I feel that I've touched on the absolute highlights, so shouldn't press my luck any further. If I don't get to publish another post until January, I hope you all have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!
Teri I. Lenfest
Fungi in the Park by Shape
Obviously, sorting my fungi photographs by color didn't work. Let's see what happens when I try to sort them by shape!
Some fungi grow in shelves.
Some look more like knobs.
While some are more or less flat.
Others are domed.
Some are cupped
These might be called globular.
Some are more like smears.
There are fingers.
Teeth.
And, those that look downright alien.
Brains anyone?
Sorting my fungi photographs by general shape is an option, but how does one decide whether to classify something as a glob, knob, or smear? There's still one selection criteria to address......appearance. I'll show you what happens when I sort by appearance in my next blog.
Teri I. Lenfest
Fungi In The Park By Color
I just got back from sharing Thanksgiving with my family in sunny southern California. I was lucky enough to get home before the big Santa Ana winds hit, but am still trying to readjust to the climate in the great Pacific Northwest. The temperatures in Riverside, CA ranged from around 50 degs F at night up into the 70's during the day, under bright blue sky. The temperatures in Federal Way are ranging from lows in the 20's or 30's to high's hovering around 43, under grey/white heavy-looking sky. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I'm cold and am wearing about five layers of clothing when I visit the park. Yeppers, short-sleeved undershirt, long-sleeved undershirt, long-sleeved overshirt, hoodie, and jacket. As tempting as it may sound, please don't push me over. I'm wearing too many layers to get back up!
I've met several people lately who have pointed out the fact that the wetland is full of mushrooms and toadstools and that I haven't written any blogs on park fungi at all this year. I hadn't really given that much thought but, since it's been pointed out to me, I decided to rectify that matter. The first thing I did after visiting the park yesterday, was cruise through my fungi photographs. To my utter dismay, I discovered that I've taken 546 photographs of fungi in the park during the last two years. How on earth was I going to deal with that many photographs? How could I possibly decide on which ones to publish? The project seemed utterly daunting to me! I was always taught that the best way to tackle an overwhelming problem is to break it down into smaller bits and deal with one small bit at a time, so the first problem was to establish my criteria for breaking this massive undertaking down into something manageable. I've been struggling with this problem for the last two days and am still left with an overwhelming number of photos that I'd like to share with you. Therefore, the next several blogs will consist of many photographs and very few words. Each photo contains many bits of information and I'm not sure how many typepad will allow me to publish in a single blog, so this will be an experiment. Anyway, I've decided to divide my photographs up into the following categories: color, shape, and general appearance. I'm going to attempt color first, although color is by no means the easiest way by which to sort the photos.
Fungi come in many different colors. The first color I'm going to deal with is red.
Next, we'll move into shades of brown. Sometimes, it's difficult to decide whether to place something under brown or red, as many browns have red undertones.
Of course, brown is subjective, so who's to decide whether something ought to be classified as brown or....
pink? Or, in this case: cream, pink, and yellow.
Is it pink, beige, or tan?
Or this one. Is it pink, beige, or tan? Depends upons your perspective and the rods and cones in your eyes, I guess.
How about this one?
This has yellow tones. Shall we call it beige or tan? Maybe cream?
This is a combination of cream with brown highlights.
These are leaning more towards the cream side.
How about this one? It's more than just white. It has warm, brown, highlights.
This one looks more like burnt sugar or caramel.
Of course, there's yellow!
And, yellow again. Although, I'm not sure whether this is a fungi or a lichen. You'd have to be a scientist to know for sure. All I know is that it's really soft and smears when you touch it, unlike the yellow lichen that grows on tree. This feels wet, like paint, whereas the other does not.
These have a yellow center. They remind me of fried eggs.
Moving from yellow to orange isn't much of a leap.
But, witch's butter certainly falls in the orange category, if you ask me.
Of course, no palette would be complete without jet black.
Now, on to green. Not only green, but green in many shades and hues.
This isn't all green, but certainly has green highlights.
Moving on to more grey tones.
Of course, some fungi start out being one color and change colors and texture as they age.
We think of mushrooms as being the white, grocery store variety, but not all white mushrooms look like those you find in the produce section of the grocery store.
If we use color as a parameter, what on earth are we going to do with these?
Obviously, trying to sort my fungi photos by color isn't working too well. Don't worry, I don't give up so easily. In the next blog, I'll try to sort them by shape.
Teri I. Lenfest
