It’s been a wet few days at Durlston, and the park is all the more soggier for it. 17.5mm of rain fell in the last 24 hours and a total of 44.5mm since Saturday. The water runs off from Long Meadow and flows across the woodland, pooling in ditches and saturating the mud, unable to permeate through the clay below.
The damp conditions lend themselves to fungal foray – I spot the slimy-looking Witches Butter, hard burnt balls of King Alfred’s Cakes, Turkey Tail brackets, and Hen of the Woods; which appears almost like a pine cone growing upon a rotting Holm Oak stump.
On the timeline, the remains of a Red Cage Stinkhorn; this fungi lasting just a few days as it ‘hatches’ from a gelatinous egg into brilliant red lattice structure. It smells awful, and on a warmer day would attract a host of flies (to spread its spores), drawn in by scent of rotting meat.
Blush pink fruits have appeared upon the billowing branches of Euonymus, flush with lime green leaves. Each of the little pods have began to burst open, separating the husks into three or four segments and revealing the bright orange berries inside. Further down the woods I find the little white pom-poms of Snowberries also in fruit.
Perched amongst the Willow, see a Grey Squirrel harvesting rosehips from the intertwined Dog Rose. It collects and eats them one at a time, working methodically around the outer red flesh, before chomping through the seeds inside.
I stop by a lookout to see Chinook rumbling across the Solent. Here I listen to the sound a Magpie scavenging through the soggy leaf litter, a Firecrest flitting through the Holm Oak, and the flight of three Great Tits as they float past the clusters of Viburnum blossom.