Chicken Mushroom, Rare Wren, Odd Sweetgum, Active Tadpoles and Basking Turtles

Top Photo: Chicken of the woods.

Chicken of the woods is a shelf mushroom which grows directly from dead wood. It does not have stems or stalks, and it’s a polypore, meaning it has numerous pores on the underside of its caps or shelves rather than gills to spread its spores.

Yellow underside showing pores and “white meat.”

This mushroom may be bright yellow or orange when fresh but may fade to white or tan as it ages. It’s edible. However, while doing research, I found it’s suggested to eat a small amount for your first go at it to see if there’s a negative reaction to this chicken-tasting and textured fungus (I’ve never eaten it).

The one pictured here was discovered by Ranger Alyssa in the woods along the Dinosaur Trail. It, as you can see, was fresh and brightly colored on the cloudy, drizzly morning it was photographed.

Can you spot the marsh wren in the next photo? Marsh wrens do not nest here at the museum or the Piedmont in general, but do migrate through the region in the fall and spring. They’re listed as year-round on the coastal plain.

No matter what time of year it is, if you’re going to see one you’re more likely to see it in a wetland, fresh or salt, than anywhere else. Nowhere are they common on the Piedmont. This one was in the vegetation growing from the floating planters next to the Floating Walkway in Explore the Wild.

Lucky look at marsh wren from Floating Walkway.

Sweetgum leaves usually turn red and or yellow in the fall, a bit later in the fall, that is, here in Durham. There is a small sweetgum in Earth Moves whose leaves have begun to turn deep burgundy, some with a blue cast. Is that blue cast simply the reflection of the sky off the shiny surface of the leaves?