An Autumn Walk along the River Tees

The long, narrow gorge spanned by Egglestone's Abbey Bridge bridge provides one the most picturesque viewing points on the River Tees in autumn

This is the view from the bridge looking upstream - Egglestone Abbey is just  above the trees in the middle distance (double-click) and is ...

...... visible from the bridge now that the leaves are falling.

The view downstream - there are footpaths on both sides of the river and you can follow it down to its confluence with the River Greta, at the Meeting of the Waters.

The river squeezes through narrow gaps and tumbles over boulders ...

.... and you can hear it through the trees all the way along the path, even when it isn't in spate.

The high humidity in the gorge makes this a fine habitat for mosses and ferns like this polypody growing as an epiphyte on a tree branch over the river.

Yellowing horse chestnut leaves provide a sunbathing spot for flies whose days are numbered, now that frosts are on their way.

Nectar-rich ivy flowers provide a last-minute refuelling station for drone flies.

Shades of yellow - hazel, oak and beech autumn colours.

Some of the large beeches have been attacked by honey fungus - always fatal, but it can take decades to kill the tree.

A nuthatch, dangling down to pick beech nuts out of beech mast - it seems to be a 'mast year', with a very heavy crop.

Ripe holly berries are a reminder that there are only 50 shopping days until Christmas.

Downstream there are some wild cherries with a fiery display of autumn colours..

... and a fine crop of ripe yew berries.

A passing shower leaves a rainbow, which is wasted on those two sheep that are watching - they only have dichromatic vision and can't distinguish red from green.

Looking back upstream - on what Kenneth Grahame in the Wind in the Willows called a 'golden afternoon'...

New Suit of Armour

The trouble with being an invertebrate with a hard external skeleton is that you have to change your suit of armour every time you grow a little bigger - which is what this woodlouse is doing. It's a risky business, leaving you exposed to predators until your new exoskeleton hardens, so this cautious crustacean is doing it in two stages. It's already slipped out of the rear half and its new shell plates have become hard and shiny. Now it's extricating itself from the head end, and here you can see that the newly exposed shell plates are still soft, with a dull surface. The animal hasn't quite removed its delicate, all-important antennae from inside their armour yet - if you double-click the image to enlarge you can just make them out inside their old translucent covering. 

This woodlouse is Oniscus asellus and you can find more about its biology here

The whole process is known as ecdysis and all invertebrates that shed their old armour in this way are grouped together as ecdysozoans. You can read all about it here.

A Forest in the Fog

Thursday's Guardian Country Diary describes a visit to Hamsterley Forest in Co. Durham on a foggy day.

The forest is a mixture of deciduous trees and conifers, with some fine beech plantations and some ancient oaks. Forests have a wonderfully mysterious, spooky quality when the sun begins to break through the fog.

In addition to the usual Scots pine and Sitka and Norway spruces there are some less familiar conifers, like this western hemlock. Its blunt resinous needles have an appealingly fruity, citrus-like aroma  when you crush them.

Hamsterley is always a good destination for a fungal foray - this (I think) is the larch bolete Suillus grevillei and this ...

... is yellow stag'shorn Calocera viscosa.

This looks like Coriolus versicolor, not yet fully expanded. The brackets exude droplets of moisture underneath.

And finally, one toadstool that's unmistakeable - stinkhorn Phallus impudicus. These always appear in large numbers in early autumn in a Norway spruce plantation in the forest and if you happen to be approaching from downwind you become aware of their presence from some distance. This is a perfect specimen that must have grown up overnight ....

.... and here' one that's probably a day old. Flies have carried off all its sticky brown spores, leaving one late arrival with nothing to eat. Slugs have already made inroads into the remains.