A Bright Yellow Day

   When folks hear that I live on the Bayou, they often have ideas that I conjure up all sorts of weird potions, fill the Little Bayou House with oddities and have knowledge of all sorts of things crammed in my brain.  Well, two out of three ain't bad, right?  I do, indeed, conjure up a lot of "potions" but mostly they are herbal tisanes and not of the magical sort (maybe).  The Little Bayou House is home to thousands upon thousands of "treasures" as I have been dubbed the "Keeper of Weird and Wonderful Things".  That knowledge of all sorts of things is more like an inkling of a vast sort of things and, probably, nothing of importance.  The information is still crammed into the nooks and crannies of the brain along with spiderwebs and the smell of old books.  Occasionally, that information will spill out at the right time and that makes it appear that I am an swamp sage.   Most of the time, however, the tidbits are trivial and have no bearing on current situations.

  Just this morning as I was making my rounds about the place, a tiny morsel of information slipped out of its hiding spot and spilled into the spotlight.  Aha!  That is "Witch's Butter"!  Hmmm...where did that come from??  I pondered a bit and another name came to mind for the mushroom or fungus which I was trying to identify.  Yellow Brain Fungus...I am not even sure where I learned that!  

  The fungus is actually a parasite to the wood decaying fungi that helps to rot fallen limbs.  It is a jelly fungus that is soft to touch but is most notable for its bright yellow hue.  That is what immediately caught my eye!  Yellow on a gray day is most welcome.  The second thing that caught my eye was that, at the angle I was taking a photograph, one blob bore a great resemblance to a tiny, yellow bird.  That set me off on a different search as the Prothonotary Warblers should be flitting about the creek bed, too!  

  I did find my bird!  If there is one thing that I have noticed about these birds, they seem to like people.  They have no problem dancing about the grass or flitting among the branches just a few feet from a hiker.  Prothonotary Warblers love to find spiders and other insects but will eat berries if a live meal cannot be found.  I sometimes see them in the marsh but, more often, they are down in the thickets of the creek bed.  

  So, all in all, this turned into a very yellow day.  The brightness of the bird and even the fungus did wonders for my mood that had turned into a blah mess with all of the gray days as of late.