January 2026 Ramsbury Nature Notes by Peter Marren

Redlead roundhead Leratiomyces ceres

After one of the best seasons for mushrooms and toadstools in years, fungi were fruiting on mild days almost into December. Woodchip mulch is widely used on flowerbeds, especially in public places, to suppress weeds and maintain relatively warm, moist soil underneath. The chips break down slowly with the help of fungi, and over the years a specialised fungus flora has developed there, that is rich in nonnative species from as far away as Australia. One of these was brightening the borders and beds at Littlecote, bright orange-red in colour with a roundish cap and dark spores. It has been named the redlead roundhead, as its colour is the same as redlead or minium, formerly used in pottery and in anti-corrosive paints. It was accompanied by other fungi feasting on the chips, including a cup fungus, a domecap and a cavalier (don’t ask me why a mushroom should be named a cavalier, even though it did grow among roundheads! Civil war among the fungi?). Not far away there were a few late field blewits, one of the best edible wild mushrooms and delicious with a bit of bacon.

There have been reports of the lovely hummingbird hawkmoth flying in November and even December. This day-flying moth, which behaves much like a hummingbird, hovering at its favourite flowers, is a migrant from southern Europe. By rights, they should all have gone south by now, but presumably there are enough late-flowering garden flowers to maintain them (hovering is thirsty work). It seems that one or two even managed to survive the winter last year, though this is not normally a hibernating species. The same is true of the red admiral which is now often the earliest butterfly of the year. It doesn’t hibernate fully, unlike its relatives the peacock and the comma, and so will fly in mild winter weather, presumably fuelled by fats imbibed from rotting fruit the previous autumn. All these things are new. Winter is no longer the dead time of year. The climate is changing and life changes with it, for better or worse.