Does a turkey-tail count as a bird?

The birds were singing this afternoon in Burns Bog. High in the trees, we heard them. Chickadees, of course, calling, "Here, sweetie". Robins a-plenty; "Cheer up!". I heard a flicker a couple of times. The song sparrows were celebrating; so were a few red-winged blackbirds in the grasses by the creek. Something went"Chirrrrrrrr" in the underbrush; a varied thrush was shouting "Cheee!" There were chirps and tweets and rattles and trills all around us. Over the open areas, swallows sang as they ate mosquitoes. (Of which there were swarms.) At the end of the afternoon, a blue grouse boomed.

And we saw one distant song sparrow. And a robin. And Laurie saw a few goldfinches before we entered the bog. That's it.

Oh, well. We did see these:

Orange and white polypore on a dead stump.


Some kind of crust fungus, smeared and hardened on a log. This is a close look, to show the pores.


Turkey-tail.


More turkey-tails, with a colour variant.


A nicely-layered shelf fungus.


Tiny mushroom, mosses and ice-blue lichens.


And a humongous gall, bigger round than the tree plagued with it. For size comparison, that's Laurie's shoulder poking out from behind the tree.

We had gone down to the bog for a short walk; we came home three hours later. There was much to see; I'll have more photos tomorrow.
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