And anxiety around picking mushrooms I don't think is helpful. These are beautiful, fascinating life forms. We should encourage others to learn more about them. While, yes, we should not discount your experience, increasing fear of poisonous mushrooms doesn't encourage anyone.

Sorry that happened to you. At no point did you explain that. Yours is literally the only story I have heard of like this, suggesting it is an extremely rare occurrence. Despite your experience, I don't think it makes these or other mushrooms "dangerous to touch". And increasing people's fear and...

This is absurd logic. No one reliable warns about handling these, or ANY mushroom.

Poisonous? Yes, although edible with special preparation, and used as a hallucinogen by some indigenous peoples. But not considered deadly, and as I said, no mushroom is dangerous to handle. Not even the actually deadly Amanitas (A phalloides and A ocreata).

This is entirely false. There is no mushroom that is considered dangerous to handle.

True, but I generally don't comment on edibility one way or the other unless posting about harvesting, specifically.

More or less round, and bright red but fading to yellow with age or rain.

I mean, Grok got one thing right; Elon does seem to have Commodus "flair"... For killing large numbers of people.

Thanks Rob!

Obviously the second two aren't specific to your region, but might cover species you find there.

Yeah photo based mushroom ID is always challenging. The standard for years was David Arora's Mushrooms Demystified. It's a doorstop, still good for ID but outdated as far as taxonomy. My go-tos are Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest (Trudell & Ammirati) and Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast.

Sure is! I'll have more photos coming soon about the bounty of beautiful fungi in the PNW!

Yep. You got me curious so I went to check my books... Apparently Witches Butter is the common name used for Tremella mesenterica, which is more often yellow. This appears to be a Dacrymyces, probably chrysospermus (palmatus in some guides). Although it could be a different Tremella as well.

Thanks Alan! I was walking past this cemetery along a hiking trail, and couldn't resist the snap with the sparrow posed so perfectly.

Possibly! Mushrooms have lots of regionally specific common names, or there may be closely related species with that name. I've only heard of this one as Witches Butter but that certainly doesn't rule out other names.

Looks like it's considered a jelly fungus.

Yep, definitely a Rufous! If it looked similar but with a green back, Allen's Hummingbird would also be a possibility, but the reddish back seen here rules that out.