It was a surprising week for me. The discovery of lots of crawlies in a half-fogotten pedestrian tunnel in a local park was a great boost, certainly at this time of year.
In that spirit, a few days before I spotted this in my local wood park:
And not from this week (earlier this month) but I was very impressed with real-life Kudzu in Japan. I’ve heard lots about it but never saw it directly: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/143452964
I have lots more lichen lifers from this week, but it’s hard to pick just one favorite so I’ll instead pick this very hungry springtail I literally found between the lichen and which is also a lifer (and who may or may not have eaten some of the lichen).
It’s been raining more or less all week. Even though it’s really necessary, I don’t enjoy it much. But it makes fungi grow. So I saw this Astraeus hygrometricus for the first time.
I’m still fascinated with lichen and finding more stuff on and between them… and while it’s probably weird this red fungus is my favorite lifer of the last week or two.
It just was so red and strange and something I had never found before, a lichenicolous fungus eating its host lichen: Illosporiopsis christiansenii
Also, maybe that’s common with fungi, but if you check taxonomy of this species on inaturalist it has no family and most mushroom sites in Google list the family as unknown
I think I observed about 20 lifers this week, most of the records are on eBird if you know me or follow our work in Ecuador.
standouts were definitely seeing a King Vulture for the first time, I couldn’t believe my partner could see it, the sun was very bright and the birds were extremely high in the sky.
we had the pleasure of encountering one of the rarest hummingbirds in the world, the Esmeraldas Woodstar in 4 completely unique locations and habitats over the past week.
We are visiting my family in Sydney for Christmas. So I’ve had lots of firsts in my parents’ backyard this week, including the following.
This amazing turreted wraparound spider (Dolophones turrigera). The only reason I spotted it was because I happened to notice it dangling from a thread before it scurried back up to its perch.
This observation is already from the 17th Dec, so more than a week ago.
When I saw it, I thought, that it looks interesting but will probably never be identified, because I had no idea if this “growth” was induced by a virus, a bacterium or some kind of insect. And I didn’t know the plant either.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/144568816
But already the CV came up with a suggestion, which turned out to be correct and which identified the plant as well - so two lifers! Aploneura lentisci & Pistacia lentiscus