Birds Nest fungi

I have photographed birds nest fungi once before, which involved grovelling around in the dirt on one particular part of the estuary track in order to capture these tiny 'nests'.

On the weekend, I was tidying around my strawberry pots when I picked up a little piece of wood I had brought home from this part of the track a few years ago, to go under the pots for drainage. I was about to toss it in the bin when I noticed it was covered in tiny fungi so decided to save it for Tiny Tuesday - it definitely fits the definition of tiny.

The piece of wood is only 9 cm x 7 cm x  1.5 cm and it was carrying 40  open nests with tiny orange spots indicating many more to come. The largest nest was just under half a centimetre in diameter. It was very hard to photograph because of the sheer numbers and the tiny size of the nests - but you will get the idea.

I would never usually remove things from their environment but when I took the pieces of wood, I had no idea of what they were carrying. It has probably been producing nests each year without me noticing.