Geograph - photograph every grid square

The small stalked structures are NS3878 : A slime mould - Arcyria cinerea. However, the main subject of the present picture is what could easily be mistaken for clumps of eggs. These are in fact the slime mould species Stemonitis fusca, beginning the change from its plasmodial stage (the mobile, slime-like feeding phase) to its spore-bearing stage.

The individual round white blobs become elongated, borne upwards on thin stalks that develop at the same time, to form a tuft of cylindrical sporangia (spore-bearing structures). Less than a day later, these ones looked very different: NS3878 : A slime mould - Stemonitis fusca.

The habitat is a piece of rotten wood.