#not tagging all the fungi bc i didn’t bother naming all of them and will prolly never draw them again

[ironychan]

Mating season must be over, because Steve has shed his fluffy tail feathers and the colour has faded out of his wattles and combs.  The others are bugging us about eating him already but we promised we wouldn't until he became a father so I guess Steve gets to live another year.

The mounds the male churkeys build turned out to have a secondary purpose: the females take them apart for nesting materials.  The nests are uncomplicated little knots of grass and twigs in which they lay four to six eggs, a bit bigger than chicken eggs and sometimes with spots or blotches on them.  With their bit done, the males just bugger off - we haven't seen any except Steve in days - and leave the hens to do all the incubating.

We have also learned that the churkeys can fly, they're just not very good at it.  One of them managed to become briefly airborne while she chased me and Kibwana away from her nest.  With the mother thus occupied, Kelleher came in from the other direction to steal the eggs.  We scrambled them.  They taste like regular eggs but somehow more so.

Anyway, please enjoy some aesthetically interesting mushrooms.