Having observed ladybug larvae and pupae all month, it was cool to check out an adult under Trisha’s microscope, and learn about diapause.
Coccinellidae
Author: Hashi
Selasphorus sasin
We’re delighted to see a hummingbird nesting close by the house, though it means we have to creep past so as not to disturb her. Two years ago, when the lemonadeberry was bigger and closer to the pathway (and thus more easily disturbed), a hummer hatched two babies there, but they died before fledging. We never knew if our presence disturbed the mama too much, or there was some other reason for the fatalities. Fingers crossed for a successful raising this year.
The Allen’s hummingbird constructs her nest out of plant fibers and down, coating it with lichens and spider webs to give it structure. There’s likely one or two eggs, which she will incubate for 15 to 17 days. The young leave the nest about three weeks after hatching, so we might have another month of fun (cautious) viewing.
Icterus cucullatus
Happy to see Mr Hooded Oriole back in the ’hood. Is he raising a family nearby? Or was that all done elsewhere, before he arrived?
Gymnopus?
I am pretty ignorant when it comes to fungi. Fungignorant, you could say. I can’t even decide how to pronounce the word. Fun-guy? Fun-jee? Fun-gee? Funj-eye? How do YOU say it?
iNaturalist suggests this specimen might be in the genus Gymnopus, which contains about 300 species, generally found growing in leaf or woody litter. Seems plausible.
Acmispon glaber
I’ve been looking at a lot of deerweed flowers, and I’m not convinced by the prevailing wisdom about their varying colours. If an individual flower turns orange after pollination, as I’ve often heard, then I would expect to see a more random distribution of orange flowers. But it’s very consistent — the further down the stem, the darker (and more shrivelled) the flower. There are no yellow flowers down low — am I to assume that every single blossom was pollinated? And there are no orange flowers up high — why not? I see bees up high.
It really seems to me that every flower gets darker as it gets older; that it’s age, not pollination, that makes the colour change.
whodunnit
I thought this illustration might be less confronting if I left it black and white. This tidy arrangement, about half the length of my foot, was on the road near our house. I didn’t notice it on my way out for a walk, just on my way back. Could a predator have dragged it there in the middle of the morning, between my two passings? That seems pretty unlikely; I guess I just wasn’t paying attention the first time, even though our road is very narrow. I have so many questions! Who/what/when/where/why?
Biodiversity
In honour of International Day for Biological Diversity, here are the birds I’ve seen at home over the past couple of days. I made an attempt at relative sizing, but I think the oriole ended up a bit small.
Cornu aspersum
Click to enbiggen.
We have a LOT of snails at the moment; they especially love the citrus. As I picked them off the trees this morning, I checked the whorl orientation, and yep, they were all dextral. It would be fun to see a sinistral snail! The idea makes the daily removal somewhat more interesting.
digger bees and bee flies
Digger bees, although solitary, nest in large aggregations. Each female digs her own tunnel, which can be up to a foot deep and have several branches. Each branch terminates in a chamber where the female lays a single egg, providing it with pollen and nectar collected from flowers. The larvae hatch and consume the stored food, then grow into pupae and then into adult bees, all while underground.
Next spring or early summer the adults will emerge, mate, and do it all over again … Right now we‘re at the mating stage, by the looks of things! I don’t know if they will re-use the existing tunnels or dig new ones. I‘ll keep checking on them.
There are also a few bee flies (possibly tribe Villini) hovering about at ground level. The larval stages of bee flies are predators or parasitoids of the eggs and larvae of other insects. The adult females usually deposit eggs in the vicinity of possible hosts, quite often in the burrows of beetles or wasps/solitary bees. So I’m pretty sure that’s what they’re looking to do! It’s a fly-eat-bee world.
Clarkia unguiculata
Clarkia unguiculata is commonly known as elegant clarkia. It is endemic to California, where it’s found in many woodland habitats, including the understory of oak woodlands here in the Santa Monica Mountains. It’s one of my favourite wildflowers, and not just because my last name is Clark 😊.
The showy flowers have hairy, fused sepals forming a cup beneath the corolla, and four petals up to 2.5 centimeters long. The paddle-like petals are pink to reddish to purple and have a slender “stalk” and diamond-shaped or triangular “tongue” (sorry, are there more correct names for parts of a petal?). There are eight long stamens, the outer four of which have large red anthers. The white stigma protrudes from the flower and can be quite large.
The above paragraph does nothing to convey how pretty this plant is! It really is very elegant.
