Turkey Tails

Having spent a week of appointments and commitments, today was a good day to go for a walk. Rosie and I went to Consal Forge to go "over the top". We walked down into the woods and followed the path up into the higher forest, then down into the river valley and back up to the pine woods and across the old forest to the path along the valley top.

There is a seat along this path where we intended to sit and have coffee and biscuits. It has an excellent view across the forest tops and you can watch the birds flitting amongst the trees. We saw great tits, finches and buzzards. The tranquillity was broken by the deep roar of a merlin engine fast approaching from the North.
First a Spitfire "it's a late mark with a griffin engine" - then to its side a little behind, a Hurricane. It is easy to identify the sound of these old aircraft as they sound so different to anything modern that is flying by. What a treat, and coffee whilst we watched the flypast!
Today is the anniversary of the start of the second world war and there are lots of events happening around the UK. We went down to Consal Station on the Cheddleton Railway and they had a steam special with war time rations and canteen facilities on the platform.

Anyway, back to the purpose of this adventure. A fine growth of turkey tails on a tree at the top of the valley. This fungus, Trametes versicolor, shows a paler than usual form, which is consistent with the variety seen in this part of Staffordshire. It is a bracket fungus with a distinct pattern that looks like the banding on the tail of a turkey.They are usually quite small in size and many in number, but on this branch they are a little larger than usual.