We had our third SMMNJC meetup today, and I’m still a-glow, hours later. Fourteen of us met at low tide at Malibu Lagoon State Beach to share a picnic, then marvel at sea hares, anemones, limpets, shrimp, crabs, octopuses, patterns in the sand, seabirds, and so much more. Near the end of our time together, I quoted the immortal words of Kurt Vonnegut, “Well if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” My heart is full.
We recently saw the return of Yellow-rumped warblers to our yard. They breed in the northern parts of the continent and come south in the non-breeding season.
Males have conspicuous yellow patches on the crown, flank, and rump (the latter giving rise to the nickname “butter butt” among birdwatchers). Their Latin name means “crowned moth-eater”, though they eat plenty of other insect species, as well as spiders.
Happy to see them back!
My homegrown cucumbers are very prickly. It’s not a problem; the spines are easy to scrub off. But before doing so today, I decided to examine some of them under the microscope. Now I’m curious about cactus spines!
On Sulphur Mountain I saw a curious phenomenon—clusters of baby acorns on one of the coast live oaks. This makes no sense to me, for multiple reasons:
I know we’ve had a weird weather year, but I only observed this phenomenon in a single tree out of many hundreds I passed. Why would only one tree be affected, if weather was the cause? What’s going on here?
Our nature journaling trip to Santa Cruz Island was cancelled by the transportation company due to strong winds. Instead, we climbed the Sulphur Mountain Road Trail and journaled frogs, jumping spiders, mutant acorns, wood rat nests, and more. I saw my first northern harrier! What a lovely day with kindred spirits.
Found this chewed fungus in the middle of a track at the Park; left by whom, I wonder? I think it’s an earth ball, Scleroderma verrucosum, but I am no mycologist.
Large milkweed bugs are seed-feeders; their main diet is, not surprisingly, milkweed seeds. So I’m not sure what this lady was doing on the sweet potato vine.
The cabbage whites (Pieris rapae) are all over my brassicas, of course, but I’m also seeing them in the Park and on ornamentals in the neighbourhood. They seem to especially like purple lantana flowers. Do they also lay their eggs on the plant? Do their larvae eat the leaves, as they do my kale?
On the subject of lantana, it’s highly invasive where I‘m from. It covers an estimated four million hectares in eastern Australia, often to the exclusion of wildlife, people and livestock. So it’s taken me a long while to get used to seeing it as a cultivated garden plant here in Southern California.
Eat up, cabbage whites—lantana not kale!
The papalo I planted two months ago has grown to about half a metre tall, and is flowering. It’s an annual, so I’d better eat more of it before it dies!
hashiworks 