We offered a beginner’s class at Nature Journal Club today, and thirty people came! After spending an hour learning the basics, everyone wandered off to journal their curiosity. Having just done a training on identifying invasive borer beetles, I was interested to record some data about insect activity on a fallen oak log. Boring? Nope, fascinating!
Our nature journal group met at Will Rogers State Historic Park to journal the fire recovery. Will Rogers himself loved eucalypts, and many are planted there. I noticed that the epicormic growth and the crown sprouts were all being ravaged, and took a closer look.
Lovely nature journal club meetup today. We had five new people come, which is always awesome. I love our regulars, but it’s great to welcome new folks too.
Random observations and questions at our SMMNJC meetup. As always, it was great to spend a few hours with a bunch of curious nature-lovers.
Fun times with the nature journal club. Turns out that adult tarantula-hawk wasps eat milkweed nectar, when they’re not catching tarantulas and laying their eggs in the paralyzed bodies. How sweet.
Galls, also known as cecidia, are abnormal swellings that form on the outer tissues of plants, resembling benign tumors or warts in animals. These growths can be triggered by a wide range of parasites, including viruses, fungi, bacteria, other plants, insects, and mites. The scientific study of these structures is called cecidology.
Galls come in many different sizes, shapes and colours; I’m always looking out for them. Our native arroyo willows display at least two different insect-triggered galls. The sawfly/midge lays its eggs under the surface of the leaf/stem. Cecidologists are still trying to figure out how the plant’s genetic instructions cause the responding structures, which provide shelter and food for the insect’s larvae when they hatch.
At our nature journal meetup today, I trialled a class I’ll be offering in a few weeks. The participants enjoyed it and gave valuable feedback. I really loved hearing all their observations and poetry. What a great way to spend a few hours.
I went off trail, down by the creek, and watched the little fishies, while listening to birdsong. Then I noticed this interesting fungus that reminded me of confetti sprinkles. iNaturalist tells me it’s in the Anthracobia genus.
hashiworks 