Way to many look alikes for me to classify. I see similar looking specimens at this location (my yard) and will defer to any identifier with sufficient expertise to classify based on these photos. @jonathan142 @richardlbaxter
I went over to Village Creek Natural Area for a bit of a walk after work today.
Found on a huge tree trunk rotting awY for several years. I think these are the fruiting bodies consisting of many unicellular organisms.
9-10 inches; first one I've seen this month.
Certainly looks like Amanita bisporigera. Washed my hands almost immediately after touching it. I usually don't touch these. Glad to know that merely touching is not likely to be a problem although ingesting them can lead to a very unpleasant death.
With temperatures in the mid-100s and no recent rain, water is a big attraction to birds in the area. Today, I was watering an area densely packed with volunteer frost weeds. Birds likely heard and saw the water spraying from the nozzle and came closer and closer to me. In addition to getting sprayed, the birds drank water off the leaves.
Despite the name black-throated, this specimen has a very light gray throat. The iNaturalist description of this species based on a Wikipedia article says "Adult males have a black throat and upper breast; females have a pale throat and black markings on their breast." Based on that, I originally marked the specimen(s) shown here as females. Based on comments below, I am not marking the sex of these specimens since they may be immature males. (There were several of these birds in the bushes as I watered but I did not count them.)
There are four prior iNaturalist August observations of this species in Tarrant County. None are early August observations. All are end-of-August observations except one undated observation. This appears to be the earliest Tarrant County summer observation of this species reported in iNaturalist. The 2021 Audobon checklist shows this species as "rare" for the second half of August. and does not show observations for the first half of August. I plan to submit this to eBird where there are additional Tarrant County observations of this species in the first eight days of August.
iNat Computer Vision suggests Rainbow Darter. However, there are no prior iNat reported observations of that species in Hot Springs National Park or near Hot Spinhgs or the southwestern quarter of the state. There being more than 200 species of darter located in Arkansas, I can't classify this interesting fish further.
Key features are the striking red coloration on the tail and fins and the barred patterning of its body. I got only this one twilight picture and did not see these fish in the morning when I returned to the site.
@neomyte
Hairy head and thorax; long antennae; thorax banded with thick reddish orange bands separated by thinner black and yellow bands.
Pumpkins washed by downstream by storm water. Next spring and early summer we'll see if seeds from these pumpkins germinate.