Introduction to some Mushrooms

Mushrooms, we have all seen them, either on our lawns, or in the woods and even in the supermarkets. But there is more to the group than the standard white mushroom with gills that we purchase in boxes at the Market. Depending on the source mushrooms have been broken down into at least 12 groups, only one of which is mushrooms with gills.

I have always been fascinated by mushrooms and when I acquired a digital camera and started wandering the local woods and parks I also started photographing anything that I found unusual or interesting.  Today's photographs are a selection of some of those photos, some made this year (2017) but others made in previous years. I am not going to try a identify these photos with specific Latin names, only the general group to which they belong, nor am I going to address edibility, if you are interested in that I suggest you purchase one of several guides that can be found either on-line or in a bookstore.  It takes more than a photograph to correctly identify a mushroom, smell, spore prints, etc. are details given in books that I am not even going to try to touch here. Note: I rarely pick the mushrooms I see, so correct identification usually isn't possible.

Before I start identifying the photographs I want to say that all mushrooms have a couple of things in common no matter the shape of the fruiting bodies, and what I have photographed are "fruiting" bodies, they are fed and created by fungi networks (mycelium) that live in soil, wood or other organic substances. The second trait they share is they reproduce by spores.  

OK, on to the photographs, the mushroom in the top photograph (by the way the color is accurate, I did not Photoshop this photo other than to resize it for the web) is a member of the Polypore or Shelf Mushroom group. I believe that this is actually a Sulphur Shelf, but since I am not sure the species of the tree it is growing on I wouldn't eat it. I found this growing in my local Brockton, MA park just this past week. I actually pulled the car over as I was driving by so I could walk back and make the photo.

The mushrooms above are a member of the Coral Fungi family. They sort of look like coral don't they. I believe this is a Ramaria Sp. but could be totally wrong.  I found these in Borderland State Park, Easton, MA. in 2011. 

These spiky white balls are a member of the Puffball family. They have no gills, and while some members of this family may have stalks they still release their spores through slits in the outer covering that occur as the mushroom matures. Photographed this summer in my local Brockton Park. I believe this is Lycoperdon echinatum, but can't swear to it. 

One family in the Mushroom category looks like a "standard" mushroom until you look under the cap to find there are no gills. The spores are released through tubes, so the underside looks spongy. This family is the Boletes. This a semi large family and I am not sure what the above is, perhaps chestnut Bolete (Gyroporus castaneus). Photographed in Ames Nowell State Park, Abington, MA. this summer.

These next three photographs are of mushrooms that belong to the Agarics or gilled mushroom family, which includes most of the mushrooms found in the supermarket. This group is very hard to identify by looks alone as their appearance can mislead the identifier at different stages of growth leading someone to think they have an editable mushroom when in reality it is deadly poisonous.

The white dots on the above mushroom are the remains of the volva (the membrane that covered the mushroom as it developed, and ruptured as it emerged above ground). There are so many types of gilled mushrooms that I haven't even attempted to name these three. The one above was photographed in my local Brockton Park this summer.

Gilled Mushrooms often grow in in clumps, above are a trio that I found growing in the woods in Nasketucket Bay State Reservation in Mattapoisett, MA. this summer. 

This larger clump also photographed this summer was found in Ames Nowell State Park. Can I say that I love to photograph clumps, well I also find individual mushrooms interesting but the clumps really spark my interest.

There are other families of Mushrooms that I haven't photographed (to my knowledge), they include Morels, Stinkhorns, Jelly Fungi, Cup Fungi, False Morels, and Hydnums (Tooth Fungi). I took my family names from a Petterson Mushroom guide I borrowed from the Library. Other information comes from a couple of web sites I have found that are devoted to North American Mushrooms. 

David Fischer's American Mushrooms,   Mushroom Expert,
and Merriam Webster Visual Dictionary 

The first two sites are packed with photographs and detailed information about mushrooms and how to identify them. They also both have information about guide books for those who wish to pursue an interest in Mushrooms.  But be warned both sites are complex and finding exactly what you want may take some time and a bit of browsing. The Webster site identifies the structures of a mushroom.

One last photo, and this one has nothing to do with mushrooms. It is a Doe that I photographed in the Power Line cut at Ames Nowell State Park. I rarely see or even hear deer on my walks even though I know most of the locations where I walk have them in residence. On the day I was in the park there were very few other visitors and none of them must have been in the cut prior to my arriving. This deer was eating until she heard me. She stood like that for about a minute (time for me to make a couple of photographs) and then took off. She looks healthy and well fed so hopefully she will survive the coming winter. She was fairly large so I am assuming a mature Doe, White Tailed Deer, sort of wish it had been a Stag but one takes what one can get.

That is it for today. Took me far too long to pull this post together, hope you enjoy it, comments are welcome, esp if you can identify any of my mushrooms.

Mid Point of Inktober

We are now more than half way through October and so far so good as far as my keeping up with the #inktober challenge goes. I have been doing one ink drawing per day. Well mostly, some days I just do the drawing part and then ink it in in the morning, but I am staying up to date so far so I am not going to quibble too much.

All drawings are being done in my small sketch book (5 x 8 inches, approx) most starting with pencil drawings and then being inked with a combination of dip pen, technical pen and my Copic Multiliner. The figure work is from my memory/imagination while the plant materials are all from reference, usually the actual object. So any errors you see in figures is because I don't have a real image in front of me.

I used the leaf and a seed pod from a Red Bud tree for the above, that little brown dot is actually one of the seeds of the Red Bud. Antelope brown ink was used for the plant material. Dip pen for the outlines and a brush for the wash. I do water the ink down quite a bit before brushing it on the drawing.

For the pears I did things slightly differently. After the initial pencil drawing the bowl and the pears were outline with a dip pen and Sepia ink, but for the color I went with watercolor paints entirely. I am relatively pleased with how this one came out. It would have been better if I had used watercolor paper for a base but still I like the results of this one.

We have a lot of Beech trees in MA. The woods/forest are full of the native species, and many cities and towns have specimens of various European Beeches growing in yards. These leaves are from a neighborhood tree which is an old Copper Beech. The tree has an enormous trunk (several feet in DIA) so I feel that it has to be over 100 years old.

Doesn't matter if the trees are native or European they all have these slightly prickly seed pods that contain 3 triangular seeds. I have drawn an empty pod and one seed to go with the leaves above.

Native Beech leaves turn yellow in the fall and sometimes the leaves will stay on the tree until next spring when the growth of the new leaves forces the old to fall. In the woods the ground underneath a grove of beech trees sometimes looks like it has a yellow carpet from the fall of leaves. Can you tell that I am very fond of Beech Trees.

I went back to the Antelope Brown for the leaves and seed pod above.

I bet you are wondering where this drawing came from. It is actually my ink drawing for the 18th. I was so tired/bored of drawing my Elf yesterday that I decided I deserved a break. These 3 mushrooms are from a photograph I made earlier in the summer and I decided they would be a good subject for yesterdays drawing. I used my Technical pen (.35mm tip) for this, making simple shapes and then shading, and then cross hatching the background to add value contrast. I didn't do a pencil sketch with these, I didn't see any reason to actually. Not amazing, but acceptable and I enjoyed the break from the Leaf/seeds and Elf series.

Closing with a couple more fall photographs. We have had some semi cold nights (no frost here, but there was elsewhere in the State) so I am not sure how much longer these flowers will survive, such a pretty yellow they brighten any yard.

The maple in the above photo is in one of the city parks and as you can see showing its colors while most of the other trees are still quite green.

Well that is it for today per usual comments are welcome. I hope you are enjoying my Inktober drawings for the most part I am enjoying making them.

A Doodle and More Inktober

So far so good this month, I have actually managed one Inktober drawing a day. Well sometimes the inking overlaps onto the morning of the next day, but I am getting the drawings done on the day. I am continuing to use a combination of reference materials and my imagination for these. The plant materials are the ones I am using references for and my figure is from my memory and imagination.

With the mushrooms above I have started using a brush to either add color or tone to the drawings instead of doing them all with the pen and having just lines. The mushrooms just called out for color and I couldn't resist. The brown in the above drawing is mostly ink, thought there is a bit of brown watercolor mixed in, the red is just watercolor.

Again these are done in my 8 x 5 inch sketchbook and I am doing under-drawings with pencil prior to inking. The mushrooms were collected on a visit to Massasoit State Park in East Taunton, and no I didn't eat any of them, when I finished drawing them I tossed them in the trash.

On another walk this week this one in Borderland State Park, Easton, MA. I acquired the leaf and seed pod of a yellow poplar. The seed pod pretty much fell apart on the way home so I ended up printing out a photograph I had made earlier in the day and using that as reference. I used Antelope Brown ink for this drawing.

On a walk to the library I collected this Rose Hip and a rose leaf. Also got pricked by thorns. Not sure what variety of rose the bush is other than one of the reds, it tends to bloom all summer and doesn't have an obvious fragrance.

I used Winsor Newton Nut Brown ink for this drawing, well other than the black.

I noticed this tree which is growing sort of on waste ground last year, but couldn't get either one of the seed pods or a leaf to make an ID of it. This year there was more of a low growing branch and I was able to snag both some seeds and a leaf, and yes that is one leaf and is actually a couple of feet long. The tree is the Tree of Heaven, it is originally from China and was planted for a while by city fathers who wanted trees that didn't mind pollution. It has turned into a problem invasive and is no longer allowed in some states and is certainly no longer being planted by those in the know.

I have only noticed this one tree in my city, but that doesn't mean there aren't others, which there probably are as this one is probably a volunteer, meaning not planted by anyone deliberately. Not sure how old it is as I don't know its growth habits, but it is old enough to bloom and have seeds so not young.

The ink here was Sepia again.

Above is the doodle, done with one of my technical pens, I just needed to play with something other than the more restrictive Inktober drawings. This was just drawn directly in ink, not even much pre-planning. I actually rather like it.

Both photographs are from my walk in Borderland State Park on Monday. It was a beautiful sunny warm (temp in the low 70's) fall day. This is some kind of Maple overlooking what should be a pond but with our lack of rainfall this summer was mostly an empty hole. I could see tree stumps and even some old stone fences from when this was farm land prior to the creation of a dam that is not in this photograph.

I love photograph milk weed seed pods that are releasing their seeds, the silk lit by the sun is so much fun.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

Pen and Ink Mushrooms and a bird

If I were more organized about my projects today's posting would include a landscape. Well I suppose in a way the mushrooms are a landscape but on a miniature scale. I just finished reading about large scale "Important" landscape paintings as in those created by John Constable (1776-1837).

Constable is a well know English landscape painter who did most of his work in the early 19th century (1800-1835). The son of a Miller who was successful in business he studied Art and spent his life drawing and painting, mainly landscapes but also portraits. He was part of the "new" breed of painter who felt that Landscape was just as worthy of being painted as Religious or Historical subjects. Another notable English painter of the same period is Turner.

From my vantage point here in the 21st century it seems odd to think that once large landscape paintings were not considered serious "Art" I have a feeling Constable would be bewildered by some of what is now called art.

I think my major take away from reading the book and looking at his paintings, is how much work he put into planning the composition of each major work. Course we are talking 6 foot wide canvases here, so probably each painting was something he worked on for months let alone weeks. Work of that size does need to be planned. Painters of the time had to make large paintings and show them at Royal Academy shows in order to get noticed and acclaimed.

Without a camera he was dependent on his sketchbooks or other paintings, some smaller plein air, as reference materials and his later works are often revisits to subjects/objects/locations he painted/sketched when he was young.  I don't want to paint like Constable but it was interesting to learn more about the times he painted in.

Constable isn't the only artist who revisits subjects. I seem to keep coming back to mushrooms. Finally managing to to finish this stipple work of a clump of mushrooms. I used as reference a photograph I made at Broadmoor (a MA Audubon sanctuary) in October of 2012.

I started this sometime last year, but put it away when I got tired of working on it. I had it with me over Christmas vacation and worked a bit more on it then, putting it aside when I got home for other projects only picking it up again about a week ago. This time I managed to finish it.

Since the the only white on the paper is the mushrooms themselves I had to make a lot of dots. Size is 6.5 inches square on Stonehenge paper, and done mostly with my 3x0 technical pen. Lighting could be better, but I had to use the flash on the camera to photograph these guys. But then I don't pretend that my art has any "noble" purpose.

Above bird, a parakeet here in the US, is another of the March WetCanvas Pen and Ink forum challenge images. I drew this guy out with pencil first then inked it in. I didn't feel like including the background which was chicken wire fencing so the image wasn't that complex to draw.

The above started out with me playing around with 3 colors of colored pencils and developed from there. Think Easter morning after the kids have been on their Easter Egg hunt, 3 colored eggs some jelly beans (miniature), a chocolate bunny and a "grass" nest. No clue where that came from except we are in Lent and I guess I must be thinking ahead to Easter. Anyway it was fun to do, hope you enjoy looking.

As my final photograph today, my neighbors cat, she enjoys sitting in the sun on the railing outside one of my windows. I will probably draw this at some point. Not sure what she was looking at, probably a bird on the roof, or flying overhead.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

Back to some Stipple projects

Above is a small stipple project that I will probably make into a bookmark. The image is of a sparrow looking up with mouth open. It is from a photograph I made of sparrows feeding at my new bird feeder. I have a feeling I caught the bird in mid chirp, certainly not an image I usually capture. Done on Stonehenge paper size is 2 x 6 inches.

Doing the sparrow reminded me that I love doing stipple work. So I went through my photo images and came up with one of flowers that I have been meaning to do something with but haven't. The flowers are Bladder Campion and they were blooming down at Massasoit State Park over a year ago now. I love the photo and hopefully will be able to make a nice stipple work out of it. So far it is just sketched in. I will have to do a review of the drawing to make sure I don't want to make any corrections, but I think it is good. This will be a long term project as the image is fairly large for a stipple piece about 7 x 9 inches.

Above is a Nature Journal page from a visit to Daniel Webster October 8th (last Monday). Drawings are of a fern frond that I haven't yet spent the time to identify, but eventually I plan on doing that. A more delicate looking fern than my last one was.

The middle image is my standard tree stump, showing that the water level in the Panne is climbing, still has a ways to go, but it was higher last week than the week before and we have had more rain so it should still be getting higher and not dropping.

Bottom image is of some orange mushrooms growing out of a tree stump. The tree had been cut up/down earlier this summer, I believe it was not only dead but had fallen across the path. They left the cut wood in the woods to decay but it was probably easier to clear the path by cutting it up. Trees that fall but don't obstruct paths are just left as they are to decay. We have since had a light frost so I doubt I will be seeing too many more mushrooms this fall.

Photograph of a field with edging of trees at Daniel Webster. Not a lot of color so far this year, but I thought this view was rather pretty.

Above is a late blooming goldenrod. I just like the colors here, yellow and various shaded of green. This was also photographed at Daniel Webster.

That is it for today. Per usual comments are always welcome.

Goslings, Mushrooms and a Figure Dwg.

My current in-process drawing is of a pair of Canada Geese Goslings. They are several weeks old, so not the cute fluffy yellow down chicks one thinks of. These guys are actually starting to fledge some more adult feathers/colors, and were shades of grey with no yellow. Drawing is from a photograph I made earlier this past summer.

I am not terribly excited by this drawing. Don't get me wrong it is a challenge and I think a good subject, it just doesn't excite me. Not totally a good thing as I can easily be distracted when my subject doesn't excite me so I make no promises about when this will get done.

Above is my Nature Journal page from a visit to Daniel Webster a week ago Monday. We had had several days of rain so the water level in the panne was higher. Which is why I drew the tree stump, though it may be tricky to tell from my drawing that the water level was higher.

On that Monday I walked a bit further down one of the paths than I usually go. Good thing I did as I was able to locate the leaf and acorn from a Black Oak Tree. Both are similar to the Scarlet Oak tree. The acorn is a bit flatter on the bottom, and the leaf is in a way simpler.

My last drawing is of a small mushroom clump I found in the Oak grove. Finally it has been wet enough that the mushrooms are fruiting. I find mushrooms fascinating so please bear with my indulging myself with some drawings of them. I will try to not bore visitors with too many pictures. I have mentioned this before but want to repeat, I do NOT harvest mushrooms in the wild, I do love to eat them, but I know I am not enough of an expert to dare harvesting wild mushrooms. Not to mention that at Mass Audubon sites nothing is supposed to be picked or harvested, though occasionally I will pick a leaf and one this day I did pick up an acorn.

Above is Monday's figure drawing. And yes she was actually wearing a dress and shoes. Well, we all can use a  change every now and then and this was our change for Monday Night.

The drawing is OK, but I have a feeling I have something slightly wrong, maybe I made that right hand a bit too large. Ah well, there are some areas I like so I guess that compensates.

My two photos today come from two different locations. The one above is from Daniel Webster, one of the red maples that hangs over the South River was turning bright red in spots.

This second photograph was made at Broadmoor, another MA Audubon location and shows some mushrooms growing out of a mossy log. These are very small mushrooms, but I find the type interesting, and love to photograph them. If anyone has any idea what they actually are I would love to know. Because mushrooms are usually found in the woods in deep shade I usually use the flash for my photographs. I would rather not, but it is hard to get a clear image if I don't.

That is it for today. Per usual comments are welcome. Need to go work on my goslings, or maybe something else.

Fall Has Arrived

Here north of the equator fall has officially arrived with the Autumnal Equinox yesterday. So today is officially the first day of fall. From now until December not only will the dark of night be longer than the period of daylight, but it will be getting longer each night. I fear it will feel like a long six months before the Spring Equinox arrives.

Above is the finished pen and ink drawing of the Cape Cod Canal and the Sagamore Bridge. I posted an in-process image of this last week, and am happy to say it is now done. Not sure how I feel about it. I think it works, but might have been a better drawing if I had placed a boat in the canal to add some interest, or maybe a seagull flying above the canal. Some times I focus too much on the overall subject and not enough on the details. At the time I felt there were enough challenges to rendering this subject and didn't even think about it lacking a focal point other than the bridge.

I used an old fashioned dip pen for this piece. Now that I have finished it I need to find a new subject to use for this type of ink work. Working with the dip pen for this drawing I have rediscovered how much I enjoy using it.

Still catching up with my nature journal, though I am beginning to see the daylight on this one.

I have two pages to share again today. The image above is from a visit to Daniel Webster, MA Audubon Sanctuary in Marshfield, MA on September 3, 2012. Saw quite a few birds, from hawks to various ducks, mallards, blue wing teal, wood ducks, but wasn't able to make any good photographs of them. So my images in the journal are fairly mundane. Top image is my usual tree stump, water level in the Panne was down a bit from the previous week. The other image is of a log bench on one of the boardwalks. It has a fern growing out of the side which has so far survived our dry summer. I wouldn't say it is thriving, but it is alive.

Later that week I made a visit to Borderland State Park over in Easton. I am happy to say I found and picked up quite a few acorns. After the almost total lack of acorns last year this year, while not a banner year, is at least proving to have a noticeable crop.

The journal page for that visit documents several of the ones I found. I hadn't realized prior to my acorn hunting that there was one more common variety of oak that I should have added to my list. I knew about White Oaks, Black Oaks, Scarlet Oaks, Northern Red Oaks, but the Pin Oak was a new one for me. On this visit I didn't identify any particular leaves with the acorn so will have to keep my eyes open when I visit other sanctuaries.

My other image is of a clump of mushrooms growing by the side of the path. It looked to me that they were growing out of some horse droppings. There are a quite a few horseback riders who ride the main paths at Borderland. It must be a lovely way to spend a few hours as the park has some lovely views.

The figure drawing above I actually drew last Monday, meaning that I am now caught up with my figure images. Not totally pleased with this image, seems I am alternating on weeks, though this isn't quite a bad as the drawing from a couple of weeks ago.

Scott was playing with lighting. This week the light was directly over the model. My issue this week was even slight position changes would cause major changes in how the shadows fell. making it hard to get a good drawing of her face. I don't love the pose either. Maybe if I had moved to a slightly different position. I would have enjoyed it a bit more and created a more successful drawing. Have to think about that during my next session.

The above photograph is from Borderland State Park, and shows one of the various bridges that are located in the park. Most of them are strictly for walkers. You can see that some of the trees are just starting to change colors. I am hoping that we get a hard frost soon so that we have better color this fall than we did last year. Weather last fall was just too warm, in a way it was nice but the warm weather made for an odd winter.

The above photo shows some blooming fall asters. These are small white asters that bloom along the edges of paths and roadsides.

ATC Mushrooms and Nature Journal

A while back I purchased a Prismacolor .005 brown ink pen/marker, and while I did a little playing with it just after I purchased it I didn't really make anything worth posting. Since I was between major projects this week I decided it would be fun to see if I could do something with the pen that I would like, and would show off it's capabilities. When used as just line the ink seems a bit light, but with the stipple I was able to get some really dark areas.

I found a reference photo of some mushrooms that I  had printed out and used it to create the Artist Trading Card image above. Done entirely with stipple on a cream colored piece of Stonehenge paper.

I love how with Stonehenge and stipple the areas left blank seem to glow, and appear lighter than the paper actually is, fun.

I have started the process of setting up a couple of major works. The above is a sketch based on a reference photograph I made a couple of weeks ago of a tree trunk in the pond at Daniel Webster. That day there were 13 turtles hauled out on the stump, a record, last fall there were days when I would see 8 or 9 turtles on the stump but never 13. I am fairly sure that part of the reason there were more this spring is because the stump has shifted and I think rolled in the water a bit, displaying some different surfaces that the turtles can utilize.

I will be doing this with pen and ink on Bristol board which is why the drawing is so rough. Details will be added with pen when I get to the actual drawing, all I need to work with are basic shapes and outlines. I still need to do a bit of tweeking, esp with the turtle shapes, but the basic outline is done.

I think I also have a subject for a drawing, but will surprise you with that one later.

The other day I was up at the Trailside Museum in the Blue Hills Reservation. My goal was to make more photographs of the mallard ducks that usually occupy the pond. I did do that and got some good photos with the new lens. Sometimes I don't write up my visits to Trailside, but there was enough going on there that I felt I should.

The above drawings for the entry are some pine needles and  a pine cone from a tree that is near the museum building. I think it is a White Spruce, the pine cone was the length and color typical for those trees. However since White Spruce is native to areas further north of MA. I have a feeling this was a planted tree.

The lower image is a rough rendering of the flowers of a Witch Hazel bush. The flowers are very distinctive and early bloomers in the Spring forest. Though we are seeing a lot of early flowers this year because of the warm winter and recent weather. Still when I checked the status of the Trout Lilies there was still no sign of them. There were daffodils blooming at the center this week, and last year they didn't bloom until April.

Above is the photo I used as reference for my Witch Hazel drawing. The flowers really are strange and not very large. The bushes seemed to be covered with these light green filaments, contrasting with the dark red flower and the grayish/black stems.

Above is another photo of a daffodil, this one is just starting to open, but you can see some open flowers in the background.

That is it for today. Hope everyone is having a great weekend. Per usual comments are always welcome.

Mushrooms Finished along with the usual stuff

Well I worked on this over the weekend and got it to the point where I am calling it done. I expect I could have done more work on the front left, but decided since I wasn't going for total photo realism that I didn't need to work it much further. I laid in enough color/pencil that it looks like wood. Besides, I will be honest and admit that I was getting tired of the piece, not to mention that I didn't want to overwork it. I am mostly pleased with how this came out. The dark values are good and really make the light mushrooms pop.

FYI I did not use any black pencil on this. The darks are several dark browns, a dark grey, and indigo. My Illustration instructor a couple of years ago advised us to not use black unless we absolutely had to. It is a dead color that absorbs all light, if you get a dark using combinations of others colors, your paintings will have more life.

Below is a Journal page from a visit I made to an ocean side State Park last week.

This was a new park for me, Ellisville Harbor in Plymouth, MA. It is on the shoreline with an estuary, marsh, beach, and barrier dunes along with a narrow strip of woods. I spent most of my time walking the the beach, picking up a couple of rocks and shell fragments. The rocks and shells I used for the drawings on the top and middle of the page. The rocks were totally smooth, worn that way by the action of the waves and sand on them. Both are probably quartz, the larger more milky and the smaller round one more translucent.

Both shells were broken a bit, and I am not sure my ink drawings do them justice.

The bottom sketch is of two gulls sitting on a rock surrounded by seaweed. The tide had been almost all the way out when I arrived, but it had already turned and was coming back in during my visit. The rock they were standing on was covered with seaweed and at high tide was certainly underwater. Not sure the species of gull, they have black legs and I think black beaks, though their backs are dark grey. Maybe a Laughing Gull in non-breeding plumage.

Below is my figure drawing from last night.

All I can say is oops, I was not in good form last night. I am not pleased with her face, or her right arm/hand. Good thing I get to try again next week. My excuse is that we had more artists this week, and I was distracted by conversations.

Below are a couple photographs from my visit to Ellisville Harbor:

The view is looking out over the tidal mud flats in the estuary, with brown grasses and some trees on the barrier beach in the middle. The land in the distance is Cape Cod, just across a narrow bit of Cape Cod Bay. The white tower toward the right belongs to a power plant on the Cape.

Not sure just what this is, but I thought it made an interesting photograph. Since the tide was almost totally out I was able to photograph rocks with some attached life forms. This is actually quite small only about an inch across.

That is it for today. Per usual comments are appreciated.