Unknown Thing is Bird’s Nest Fungus

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Subject:  bug or seed pod?
Geographic location of the bug:  Mill Creek, WA
Date: 04/20/2021
Time: 09:28 PM EDT
Your letter to the bugman:  Hello,
I was moving pots around on my deck and found several pods (?) like this in the angle where the deck meets the house. This was the largest but still isn’t very big (the USB connector is provided for scale). They required some effort to remove. This one even took some paint from the house.
Any ideas what this could be? I’ve used various image search engines but keep getting bowls of nuts, berries, and peas. Now I’m hungry! 😉
Thanks for your help,
PJ
How you want your letter signed:  PJ

Bird’s Nest Fungus

Dear PJ,
We do not recognize this thing, but if faced with the choice of seed pod or egg case, we believe this is the latter.  It appears to be spun from silk, so that could mean a Spider or even an Orthopteran.  The eggs, if that is what they are, appear more Orthopteran to us but the case appears more like the egg case of a Spider.  Perhaps one of our readers will have a better idea.  So sorry your web search made you hungry.

Bird’s Nest Fungus

Thanks to everyone who wrote in that this is a fruiting body of the Bird’s Nest Fungus.

Hello Daniel,
Thank you for the quick response! After I sent my ID request to you, I kept searching but switched over to fungi which proved more fruitful and definitely killed my appetite.
Anyway, turns out, this is bird’s nest fungi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nidulariaceae). My sample was really dried out due to our unseasonably dry/sunny weather recently, but it’s pretty unmistakable.
It’s amazing how much it looks like a woven egg sac, tho. Fungi are pretty darn fascinating.
Thanks again!
PJ

13 thoughts on “Unknown Thing is Bird’s Nest Fungus”

  4. This appears to be the fruiting body of a ‘Birds Nest’ fungus. The spores are contained in the ‘eggs’. I have seen similar varieties from Ohio to The Amazon.

    Reply

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