I took myself down to a nearby (dry) creek and sat in the shade of a California sycamore for a while. This is my favourite local native tree, with its mottled leopard bark and floppy clown-glove leaves. I’d plant one at our place if we had the water, but alas our block is too dry for a sycamore to thrive here.
New-to-me beetle in the kitchen last night.
I had my first ocean swim of the year today, preceded by litter pickup and followed by bird-sketching. All in all, a lovely morning.
It’s funny, I think of orb weavers as being honking big spiders, but of course they come in all sizes. This one was only 1/8″ / 3mm long. Those are not googly eyes at the front; they are the pedipalps.
After reading that these orb weavers are called ‘trashline’ because of the debris they collect in a straight line in their webs, I went looking in the yard for them, and found a couple more. Noticing leads to learning leads to awe leads to more noticing, a delightful virtuous circle.
Lewis MacAdams (1944-2020) was an American poet, environmental activist, journalist, and filmmaker whose passion was to re-wild the LA River (which was encased in concrete and fenced in 1938) and make it accessible again to people and wildlife. He co-founded Friends of the Los Angeles River in 1985, an organization which educates, empowers, and mobilizes Angelenos to repair habitat and fight for the policies that will reclaim a healthy river.
Today Urban Sketchers Los Angeles met at Lewis MacAdams Riverfront Park at Glendale Narrows, a nine-mile section of the river that has a natural soft bottom, instead of a concrete floor, allowing native river plants and animals to thrive. It was great to see egrets, herons and ducks enjoying the water. I wasn’t that happy with any of my river sketches, but here’s one of the park itself.
So looking forward to hearing the merry merry king of the bush again soon.
Lipstick tang, also known as barcheek unicornfish, naso tang, orange-spine unicornfish, clown tang, striped unicornfish, black-finned unicornfish, clown surgeonfish, smooth-headed unicornfish, and probably many more monikers. Thank goodness for Latin names, so we can agree on just which life-form we’re talking about. But then, genetic testing has been leading to reclassification of many species in recent times … so even Latin names can change.
The native milkweed hosts lots of critters, some beneficial to it, some harmful. The most famous is the monarch butterfly (both larval and adult stages) but it’s a bit late in the year for them now.
Americans have a tendency to call all insects “bugs”. I first thought the terms were interchangeable, but I’ve learned that while all bugs are insects, not all insects are bugs.
The key difference between true bugs and other insects is their mouth parts. True bugs have rigid piercing/sucking mouthparts that look like a long beak and act like a straw. Most suck plant juices, but some feed on animals. Water bugs are venomous; they liquify then drink their prey. Yum!
Thanks to Trisha Nichols for another fun and informative lesson.
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