Life on the Outer Coast

Sunny!
Managed to squish in a walk to the first bridge on the Indian river trail before the Whalefest lectures started at 1pm. I thought about kayaking instead, but assumed that the weather would soon preclude most mushroom growth and I should take advantage of the opportunity.
I forgot to set the clock back last night, so felt simulataneously virtuous for getting out of bed at 7:30am and rested because my body thought it had slept in. The feeder had a steady stream of chickadees moving sunflower seed to caches. One chickadee was bringing them up to the eaves above the front windows. Not sure that this is a good thing, but since the roof already leaks, it probably is fine. Maybe the seeds will absorb the water and grow next spring. Nice image, but not a likely one. Only two juncos this morning.
The goldeneyes were at the dock, a few still fly off when I pound down the ramp, but most just paddle a bit further away. Along the path to town found 3 pelagic cormorants, 7 mergansers, one common loon, mew, glaucous-winged and at least one Thayers/Herring gull. Yesterday's fork-tailed petrels were not to be seen.

I stopped at the muskeg to search for the pink Hygrophorus. Only found a few tattered and frozen remains of 3 individuals. There was a bit of ice on the ponds and the moss was a bit on the crunchy side. The view of the Sisters with snow was quite compelling.
Back on the trail, collected 2 nice sized Hydnum repandum and one Golden Chanterelle. They are probably the last of the season. The Hydnum (Hydni?) were much lighter colored than typical, but they tasted just fine. I did recollect the dark capped Hygrophorus from the trail side. It has some distinctive features, including a partial veil and a viscid cap and stem. I managed to get a spore print (white) last time and did one cap section (vaguely divergent tramal hyphae), but the mushroom didn't hold up well. In fact it turned into a rather gooey mess. I'll have to be a bit more decisive and speedy with my identification this time.
Lactarius rufus was still fruiting and their were a few Russula along the way, but I let them be in the hope I'd focus on the Hygrophori.
I was trying to pay a bit more attention to my surrounding on this trip, I was trying to look at polypores on snags to get more of an idea how often trees are visibly infected with multiple fungi. Still mostly saw Fomitopsis pinicola, with occasional Laetiporus conifericola. On two snags I saw a reddish brown polypore that had multiple fruiting bodies clumped together. The size was somewhat variable in each clump, but overall similar to the Fomitopsis. Unfortunately both clumps were well out of reach, so I'm not certain what fungus they were or even if the two clumps were the same fungus.
At one stop, I heard an amazing amount of bird sound that I thought was coming from some red alders across the river. It sounded like several birds, but the river was loud enough that I couldn't quite tell what I was hearing. Didn't see anything from the trail, so went down to the river edge, it was a dipper. The variety of sounds and volume still sounded alot like multiple birds, but there was just one. It stood on a rock about 1/3 the way across the river. I listened for at least 5 minutes while it sang. It only briefly stopped twice. I thought that there must have been another bird in the area, but I couldn't find it. I did find a brown creeper. It flew across the river and worked a few trees for insects. The dipper was still singing when I left, but I was getting cold and running out of time. On the way back to the trail, found my first clump of Lobaria linita on a smallish Western Hemlock. For some reason (obliviousness?) I had only noticed this lichen on Spruce and Cottonwood.
I was tempted to go further than the bridge, I thought to look for the Polystichum andersonii I found in June or look in the next muskeg for pink Hygrophori, but it was time to turn around. On the way back, I found several small patches of Lobaria linita on Western hemlock and one rather noticable clump on a largish Mountain hemlock across from the path to the muskeg bench.
Several of the red alder snags were sprouting clumps of Panellus serotinus (late oyster). It forms shelving clumps of caps with short lateral stems. A few lacked stems. The caps varied from green to grey and the gills were somewhat yellowish. The largest I collected had caps 8cm wide. (I was inspired by this summer's great head circumference contest to use centimeters to elevate all activities to a more science-like level.) Arora lists them as a mediocre edible, the description doesn't tempt me. I am tempted to germinating some of the spores by the broth & soaked cardboard method that Stamets described in Mycelium Running. I'll probably put some on media as well.