Fischer's Eggs - part 2

I visited the Fischer's Egg Farm (see below post) again yesterday, six days after my previous visit. In the interim the site had been subject to some Fischer's Egg tourism! Plenty of Brook Waimārama Sanctuary volunteers were keen to see and/or photograph these rare fungi.

It was interesting to see what effect time had had on them. The first photo below is copied from my previous post. The second is the same three eggs but six days later. Note the one on the right was in much more of a hurry to escape its shell than the lower one.

This one is about the size of a marble. Note that it has completely detached from its shell (above it) and rolled down the hill.

Looks like a bunch of fruiting bodies all growing on top of one another.

It would be tempting to dig around here and see what it looks like underground (of course I didn't). That's likely exactly what a pig would have done if they'd been allowed. There would be a pile of overturned soil and we could only guess at what tasty morsels had been eaten. I could imagine a pig destroying a patch of 20+ Fischer's Eggs in a few minutes.

Fischer's Eggs

I have a lot of eggs in this post, but no birds eggs! Fischer's Egg fungi are endangered, and only found in a couple of places in New Zealand. They're also found in Tasmania. A Fischer's Egg is the fruiting body of the Claustula genus of fungi, the rest of the organism exists below ground. The first one found in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary since the sanctuary became pest-free was in 2020; more examples have been found in the Sanctuary since then. This genus may be benefitting (perhaps greatly) from the earlier removal of browsing ungulates, although that is not certain. 

In July 2021, sanctuary-volunteer Wayne Hennessy found one on a minor spur on a monitoring line I commonly walk. The following week I inspected it on my way past. Every visit since then I've looked at that spot for another fruiting event. A little over two years later (October 2023) I saw an egg in exactly the same spot.

In June this year (2025) during the kākāriki karaka population count, I was walking the line again with sanctuary employee Henry Hart and showed him where those two eggs had grown; there was no egg, but Henry promptly found one half a metre above that spot!

Last weekend I was passing that spot again, and quickly found five more Fischer's Eggs. Two on the track, and the other three a couple of metres below the track. Given how quickly I found them without trying, I guessed there could be plenty more nearby up and down the spur.

So yesterday I bush-bashed down the spur towards the eggs I'd found last week, and found a large patch of them about 100m above last week's find. I could count about 27 without moving my feet; there were about 29 in that patch. Then I continued down the spur finding one more on the way and arrived at the ones I'd found last week. I found about 12 more nearby. So 42 new Fischer's Eggs; not bad for a morning's work. Here are a few of them.

A few 'hatched' eggs in good condition. Note the remains of the 'shell' (the pink/brown skin that initially enclosed the egg).

A few older eggs beginning to decay.

This one still enclosed in the 'skin'.

An early-stage one pushing the soil aside.

A couple of unusually-shaped eggs. Note two more either hatching or about to hatch in the second photo. The one in the last photo is about the size of a small fist.