A few days later, in early October, a group of us went to Chalkney Wood, near Earls
Colne, to hunt for fungi. What was meant to be one group, soon broke up into two, who
did not meet again until the end by the cars. The subgroup 1 was in walked north to the
wetter parts of the wood, led by Ken Adams, and found loads of fungi, and not a few
interesting plants as well. For me, the most exciting was the Violet Helleborine, not in
flower by now, but with distinctive purplish leaves and stems, and clearly tall plants
with many capsules matured. We were on Boulder Clay, so the slightly basic soil was
right for it; as it was also for a tiny violet fungus with lilac gills with deep blue edges,
Entoloma euchroum, (quite uncommon) growing on a rotten stump of Hazel. Another
find of interest was a Scaly Male-fern Dryopteris affinis ssp affinis, a subspecies which
is quite rare in Essex. We had with us Claudi Soler who took a lovely set of pictures, two
of which are shown, top side and lower side of Blushing Bracket Daedaleopsis confragosa
(see Plates 2 & 3).
In the middle of October we went walking one day with my sister in Hatfield Forest.
Much of the day was uneventful, although very pleasant. Suddenly, across a clearing,
we saw an unfamiliar animal, perhaps a small kind of pig or possibly a dog. My sister
said immediately 'that's a Muntjak deer'. 1 know there are many such round our way
too, but they are generally very secretive animals and only really come out much around
dawn and dusk, when we are not usually out and about. But this one was out in the early
afternoon, checking the woodland edges and even running for a short while across the
open grassy space. Its coat was grey, and its body quite chunky, but on short legs for a
deer. My sister said that the name Muntjak means 'forest pig', from the Malay word for
it. It was not hard to see the resemblance. My sister said they make good eating, which
they undoubtedly would, but we failed to catch this one! And we all know they eat
anything and everything of plant origin, but especially orchids in bud, oxlips in bud etc
and do a lot of damage wherever they are. And they breed like rabbits!
We have a big bag of peat-free compost (i.e. bought, sterile) that lives on the patio
below the garden table, ready for use when potting on seedlings and so on. The current
bag was not finished up in the spring, so it has quite a lot of compost in it and was
incompletely sealed when we had finished with it. I had placed an old, empty bag over
the gap to help prevent invasion of seeds or rain. Recently I noticed that somebody had
chewed a hole in the side of the bag. That somebody had small teeth, so I thought it was
probably a Grey Squirrel who had sampled it and did not like the taste. Yesterday I went
to move the bag to secure it. As I touched the bag 2 mice ran out. The larger of the two
ran straight for the shrubby garden bed where our wild vine is growing (no flowers this
year, so no grapes; the Smith winery is still a twinkle in our eyes), and was presumably
the mother. But the smaller one, a youngster, stayed put and looked at me for several
minutes. I moved slightly, and he/she scrabbled against the plastic but could not quite
reach the hole. At the same time another little face appeared out of another hole, and, on
seeing me, shot back inside again. I called my husband to bring his camera, but he came
with a glove instead so I could assist him/her back into the bag where the nest clearly
6 Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 58, January 2009