December 2020

15 Buckden Roundabout December 2020 Wildlife in Buckden Wildlife in Buckden Fungi It has been another great autumn for fungi in the Parish with a good variety of brittlegills, boletes, earthstars, brackets, puffballs and many more on show. Hopefully will have enjoyed some of them while out and about or maybe your own garden has been productive. I ’ ve enjoyed pointing some out to people when I ’ ve been out surveying the churchyard, cemetery, and especially the greens on Greenway, School Lane and Mill Road which are real hotspots. I must look very odd crouching down in the grass and scouring tree trunks, but do come over and say hello! One of our star shows is provided by a big colony of Fly Agarics on Greenway. The stately red, and white - spotted, toadstools grow in association with birch. The colony this year grew to more than 60, which was way up on last year. Sadly, I wasn ’ t able to get to them again before the mowers came, so this is a priority for next year to get them caged. If you see any lovely toadstools growing near you, please do pop a little fence around, or some wire over, them to protect them from the chop! The star find of the autumn (pardon the pun), was a colony of earthstars growing in Lucks Lane Cemetery under the holm oaks there. Not only that, there were three different species. I identified the domi- nant one as Striated Earthstars and there were up to 25 at a time of them, but the other two looked very interesting in- deed. With help from to the Huntingdonshire Fungi Recorder, who is a friend of mine, we were able to confirm the three small earthstars, that curled right up when dry, as Daisy Earth- stars – a rare species and this was the first time it had been found in the county. Sadly, the mysterious third species, which we suspected to be something very good also, disappeared before we could confirm what it was. Other delights included parrot, blackening and snowy waxcaps in the grassland in the cemetery (plus one other I am still work- ing on!), the delightfully - named Pink Domecap and Green - bruising Coral there and close to me on Greenway, Brown Birch Boletes, Golden Scalycap on one of the big willows and tiny Field Bird ’ s Nests on twigs opposite my house. I found more than 100 fungi species in the Parish this autumn and you can still see plenty through winter, so enjoy. What wildlife have you seen in Buckden? On the subject of recording our wildlife, I have been compiling a database of all the species seen within the Parish boundary and I would love to add your records! The more we have, the better as we know what is where and can then try to protect those places and species and provide those species with what they need. This is exactly what the Biodiversity section of our fantastic Neighbourhood Plan seeks to do, so please let me know what you have seen and where. Anything is valuable, whether it is hedgehogs, birds (records of breeding birds are very welcome), wildflowers, bugs or bees. If you have any records from your garden or elsewhere in the Parish historically, it would be amazing to know about them please and if you are happy, I will add them to the official data- base. I know we have lots of excellent naturalists living in the village, so I would love to hear from you and if you have rec- ords in a shareable form, however many, please share them for the official Parish database that will also go to the local Environmental Records Centre. Thank you! Mark Ward is the RSPB ’ s Head of Supporter Experience and a nature writer. He has lived in Buckden for 10 years and Cam- bridgeshire all his life. You can share your wildlife records with him by emailing him at goldenbins@hotmail.co.uk Blackening waxcap—Lucks Lane Cemetry Golden scalycap on Greenway Earthstars from Lucks Lane Cemetry—rare Daisy Earthstar at the front