It had been three and a half years since I'd last (and first) seen Merismodes in person (Observation 191343). After Juniper Perlis showed me what to look for on our walk in Latourette Park, I had the gestalt down and started seeing it again and again (it's smaller than I remembered, but smaller still in the cold and dry of the winter with the cups all closed). While it might be regionally rare elsewhere in New York, it is locally abundant all over NYC. What no one expected to find the next day was M. fasciculata; one of M. anomala's macroscopically indistinguishable sister species. Tom scoped this one and found the characteristic differences in hair ornamentation and spore size to clinch the ID, making this a first for both Alley Pond Park and the overall NYC list.