Yellow Fungus and Blue Jays

There is a very big yellow hunk of fungus on one of our largest trees, an ash that stands in the front yard. Shelly put out a photo and asked her online people what it was. Might be a sulfur shelf? Our own research says that is most likely what it is. This is good to know, but also bad news for us. This kind of fungus usually only appears on the exterior of a tree with much rot inside. A close examination of our ash tree revealed a large cavity facing south with a lot of rot inside.

We were sitting at the kitchen table looking out the west double windows and noticed a lot of bird activity. Eight to ten blue birds were flying around and drinking and dipping and washing in the puddles in our gravel driveway. We shortly identified them as a flock of blue jays, which none of us had seen in a large group before. They hung around and bathed, then were gone. We found out some blue jays migrate while others don’t.

Harvest started last month and is finally winding down in our area. As usual an amazing amount of dust and debris was kicked up and if there is no breeze it will hang in the air for hours. Add to that all the dust from our gravel road created by coming and going farm equipment and it has been a pretty dirty fall so far.