I almost always neglect to say where I find the subjects in my photos. Today I’ll show ya where I found some nice lichen to photograph.

Living in a rural area means the wild things are right in my ‘backyard’. Of course my backyard includes a neighbor’s farm consisting of wet woods, crop fields and swamps bordered by the Grasse River. Finding something interesting is no harder than wandering around in the hundreds of acres behind my house. When that’s not enough there are thousands of acres of ‘wild’ land within a short drive. Being a ‘stone’s throw’ north of the Adirondacks does have some advantages.

Dog and I checked out a rock pile in one of the crop fields out back. Old rock piles in a sunny location are a great place to seek lichens. Advantage mine – air quality is excellent (lichens need clean air) and piles of rock are left undisturbed for generations.

Look beyond the ‘new’ pile of rocks to see a ‘mature’ tree covered rock pile. Rock islands like this are a common sight in north country fields.

As expected, there were numerous colonies of lichens growing on the rocks and the conditions just right for erecting reproductive structures.

Pixie Cup Lichen – Cladonia sp.

I’m not going to argue over the common name but these things look more like wind instruments belonging to a pixie land brass band.

I ain’t whistling pixie, that red bug is a Red Bug. If you need to know more you can Google, chigger. While you do that, I’ll go walk naked through one of those car washes with the big spinning brushes, get a full body-wax and then just to make sure there’s nothing up my sleeve, burn my clothes. I already know more than I want to.

Actually I’m not worried, I see a lot of chiggers but have never had one dine on me, thank goodness.