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Splash Cup
Bird's Nest Mushroom
(Cyanthus striatus)
Bird in Nest
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Aborted Enteloma sculpture

Splash Cup Bird's Nest Mushroom

sculpture, acrylic paints
This is a tiny mushroom that resembles a bird's nest. It's tan to deep brown, woolly, and goblet-shaped, only 1/4 to 5/8 inches wide, narrowing toward the bottom. When immature, each cup is sealed by a white cover.

Inside are what look like whitish miniature flattened eggs, 1/32-1/16 inches wide — actually spore cases ejected into the environment by raindrops!

Splash Cups

Splash Cup Bird's Nest Mushrooms

Note the tiny mushrooms, some closed, and one open with whitish spore cases inside.

You can find these mushrooms on all manner of dead wood throughout North America in the summer and fall.

They're not edible, but the mushroom were lots of fun for me to model: the entire sculpture photographed above is only 1-1/2 inches long, and I used needles to mold some of the features.