seahare123's Favorites

Albino blackbird. About one in a hundred has some white feathering and one in a thousand is fully white. These are normally leucistic or isabelline birds with a cinnamon cast to the feathers and normal eye and beak colour but this one is a genuine albino. Never seen one before. Probably won’t last long as they are conspicuous, may be ostracized by their mates and probably have poor vision. The observer said it seemed to be almost blind

Habitat: nivicolous in a subalpine temperate forest; on underside of Abies lasiocarpa wood near melting snow.
Sporocarp: 2-4 mm, dark purple-black, densely clustered.
Sporotheca: elongate-ovate/fusiform, black, 2-3 mm long x 1.0-1.5 mm diam.
Stalk: short, black, fibrous, 0.5-0.9 mm
Hypothallus: well-formed, blackish to reddish-brown, discoid around sporocarps .
Peridium: shining iridescent blue-purple-gold-silver; persistent, especially toward the base; light brown under LM.
Columella: continuation of the stalk; straight, tapering to and beyond the apex of the sporotheca.
Capillitium: branching along the length of the columella; dense, anastomising with many free ends; dark brown under LM; 1-3 µm; threads ornamented with spines or warts.
Spores: purple-black in mass, violet-brown in LM; (9.2)10.1-11.5(11.8) µm, spinulose.