Kirkby Stephen's macaws feeding on beech mast

Kirkby Stephen, in the Eden Valley in Cumbria, has a locally famous flock of free-flying feral macaws. It seems that beech mast is their favourite food - all these photographs were taken from under a beech tree outside the local fire station this afternoon.

These spectacular birds originally belonged to a local farmer and conservationist called John Strutt, who died a couple of years ago. You can read all about this remarkable man and his amazing free-range parrots by visiting this web site.

There's also more about him here.

Fine fungi

After a bit of a slow start here, the crop of interesting autumn fungi is beginning to improve, no doubt because of recent rain. We found these three species in the Tyne valley near Wylam today. 

Variable oysterling Crepidotus variabilis, growing on dead gorse stem

Beech woodwort Hypoxylon fragiforme, looking very like Christmas baubles. Growing on a fallen tree trunk.

Purple jellydisc Ascocoryne sarcoides, looking like something that belongs on a butcher's slab. Growing on a fallen tree trunk.

A luxuriance of lichens

Today's Guardian Country Diary is about the way in which the right combination of habitat factors - light, humidity and shelter from the wind - can coincide to provide conditions that favour the luxuriant growth of lichens on trees.

All of these lichen species were festooning just three larch trees in a plantation in Hamsterley forest. The trees were at close commercial spacing in neat rows, but only three on the outside row, in a dip in the ground, carried a dense population of lichens. The next row in, about five feet behind, had a few but the row beyond those, that would have been too shaded in summer when the larches carried needles, had none at all.

This beauty, also shown in the four photos immediately below, is (I think) Usnea subfloridana. Its delicate branches don't respond well to being buffeted by gales but in this sheltered location it hung like beards from the trees.

I've yet to identify the following species but they too covered the lower branches of the larches.

Ramalina farinaceae (?)

Hypogymnia physoides (?)

Evernia prunastri (?)

Cetraria chlorophylla (?)

Hypogymnia physoides (?)

Cladonia fimbriata (?) growing on an old larch cone