Chasing colour

My instinct to try and preserve our autumn colour was well-founded. After last week's frost most of the trees have now lost their leaves and the world has become significantly more dreary, especially as the sun seems to be permanently hidden behind thick grey clouds.

Despite still feeling a bit under the weather, I desperately needed to get away from the computer so headed out to Stonepit Close, which, being a limestone quarry, is at least not a claggy quagmire. 

There were a few golden birch leaves hanging on, but the most colourful thing I found was this ash twig clothed in lichens - bright yellow Xanthoria parietina and grey-green Physcia adscendens. The puce-pink blobs are the lichenicolous fungus Illiosporopsis christiansenii, tiny but worth looking out for at this time of year. The other fungus I found was much larger, a fine example of Birch Mazegill (see extra) on a dead birch stump which was the result of management necessary to maintain areas of open grassland and bare rock,