Autumnal favourites 2022

You don’t need sharp close-up photos to produce a really good post:

2 Likes

But you do need a bit of luck so thank you for featuring. We took this with an ipad; there were just a few minutes when it was visible - then the light changed. Today the web is there again - maybe a new one, or maybe it’s a female who is keeping the web from day to day. At one point - just a few moments, we saw the single thread that runs to the retreat. The spider herself we not knowingly seen.
I hope your Autumn Favourites will gather more posts.

A Hat trick of excellence, early this morning
https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/uk-and-ireland/view/observation/853735/
More seaside Observations are needed

2 Likes

Good, innit?
.
Pesky padding added.

I enjoyed this one as much for its novelty as the subject:

2 Likes

One to spot!

2 Likes

More ideas needed

1 Like

Great fun but completely baffling!!

It looks like a pile of river silt that has been under a plastic sheet so that invertebrates have crawled between the sheet and the silt.

I agree, it does. You could try for an ID and I might agree

Do they really use river silt in that manufacturing process?

Results are in

2 Likes

Another wonderfully engaging post from this user. She’s turning up all sorts of unusual and challenging observations, intermixed with things like this, that are an absolute delight.

3 Likes

Agreed. Wonderful contributor, an iSpot treasure.

Just a really good post with several photos, and an interesting ID debate (which, I suspect, will not attract too much input - cup fungi being more than necessarily difficult).
It highlights a quandry of mine that I’ve mentioned before. I agree with the genus ID, but I also suspect that the specific revision is right. It’s a bit beyond my competence, so which should I agree with?
This does not at all detract from an excellent observation; that finds something worthwhile in a mundane situation, and unwelcoming weather.

There is not much choice about the ID beyond genus as getting samples to a microscope will be impractical due to them being frozen and likely to turn to nothing if taken indoors for detailed examination.

Unless you’re going by astronomical seasons it’s past time to switch to hibernal (or brumal) favourites

I have just edited my observation not to remove anything.
I have added three more even more curious photos.

I VERY much appreciate links to Observations that go the extra distance - it does
I agreed to it very early on but did not say why the Genus and not the species.
The main reason I agreed (I was the first) was to shift the banner away from the species until it had strong support or at least more input, doing so often sets a ‘trend’
One has to read a little of the on-line resource to find that species are notoriously difficult to separate. Plenty of ‘our’ Peziza species IDs are probably wrong and a very high % are to genus only.

No-one else will mention the iSpotlight of Piziza containing ALL 156 Observations and which I will review tomorrow. Who knows how to locate it? :star:
Using the Explore Community (Filter) to advantage it can be seen that few of the Species Observations have agreements, plenty have more than one Species ID for a reason. We have to go back to 2019 to find the most recent species agreement - speaks volumes
.

Well done.
That is exactly why I stayed at genus level.