wordless Wednesday

happy new year's

Wishing a healthy and happy new year to all the bloggers out there!  It's been a while since I've done a proper blog and site shout-out.  Here are some I've been enjoying lately, in no particular order and not necessarily nature-related:
bigsurkate, Big Sur News & Events – Road Conditions & Fires

66 Square Feet (Plus), New York: one woman, one terrace, twelve seasons.

The California Weather Blog, brought to you by Weather West

TYWKIWDBI ("Tai-Wiki-Widbee"), "Things You Wouldn't Know If We Didn't Blog Intermittently."

Murrmurrs

Posie Gets Cozy, on life, love, and all things crafty by Alicia Paulson

Secret Santa Cruz

Notes from Kenya: MSU Hyena Research
the common milkweed
where cool things happen 

what the public defender?, 20-something PD trying to navigate the justice system without killing anyone.

ps 01/03/14 - Here's a new favorite blog post, A Breathing Earth by John Nelson on UX Blog, Data visualization at IDV Solutions., with its follow-up post Breathing Earth: How and Why.

naming nature

Art sent me a book under the guise of my non-birthday last year.  It's Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science by Carol Kaesuk Yoon.  I'm not a big reader, so it sat on my shelf for 9 months until Andy and I went to a cabin for holiday this spring (read: no internet, no tv, no phone).  Naming Nature made sense to me at the time and provided a good historical summary, most of which I've long forgotten the details.  I also took along my perennial favorite Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, which I read through twice (it's total book candy) while it rained.

Given my recent discovery of my own religious-based beliefs still lurking about in the grey matter, I think it's time to give Carol's Naming Nature another read through.  Let's see what will stick this time around under a refocused lens of understanding.

I'm guessing my written lines from my last blog post's edit, "As humans, I think we have an instinctive need to identify things, although our ability to do so is not always intuitive.  What are you?  It's in our nature." came directly from having read Carol's book.  It's funny how the mind works.

Art and Jim also sent me several scientific papers, a book chapter, and a dissertation all covering related topics on speciation, subspeciation, the molecular phylogentics of Eriogonum, and the issues that arise when taxonomy meets law.  I'll admit to being a bit intimidated by the technical details that read like Greek to me, and that's one of the points of Carol's book of how science, as it's practiced today, is largely out of reach to the average Joe.

One of the goals that I set out for Nature ID was to invite folks to "learn along with me."  Despite the foolishness I've displayed as of late, that invitation still stands.  Take a look at the book if you want (I recommend it), and feel free to comment.

ps - Has anyone else noticed their reading comprehension is easier from a printed physical page compared to an electronic pdf?  I'm loathed to print out so much paper, but...  I wonder if this holds true for kids growing up in the digital age who are learning to read primarily from computer screens?

sunrise ~ 10/23/14 ~ at home

sunrise from home

October 23, 2014

It's been a while since we've had a stop-in-your-tracks-and-stare kind of sunrise like this.  I believe the intense color was helped along by the particulate matter in the air that was left over from huge fire they had in Gilroy yesterday morning.  I could see the smoke plume from across the Monterey Bay.  Thankfully, it wasn't a wildfire.  Late October is the time of year I consider the start of sunrise season.  Is there a season for sunrises?  Sure.  Why not?  Of course, sunrises happen every day, but to get color, amazing color and contrast and clouds, autumn, winter, and spring skies are the ticket in our Mediterranean climate.  Around here, it goes all the way through to April (if my blog's sunrise pics speak to any pattern).  Sigh.  I can hardly wait for the rain.

ps 10/25/14 - It rained this Saturday morning.  Yay!  The last time it rained was exactly one month ago on 09/25/14, also in the morning.

hooded owlet ~ 09/18/14 ~ at home

hooded owlet moth

Cucullia sp. (Hodges 10180-10214)

I have to say, Andy is incredibly accommodating to my insect-rearing whims.  Twenty years ago, my ex threw a hissy fit after I mentioned I wanted to bring home a couple silk moth caterpillars from class.  I never did.  I should have known right then that it wasn't going to work out.  Ha!  Anyways, Andy got home before I did and even though he was pressed for time to get to an evening meeting, he discovered Charlotte went on her walkabout and he went searching for her around the living room.  Oh my goodness.  He's seen me make these containers enough times that once he found Charlotte tucked under a cotton rug, he knew what to do.  Admittedly, he used an old gym sock instead of nylon (I changed it out before this pic), but he got the gist.  He said she held still for about 3 minutes and then in 30 seconds she was completely under.  That was way quicker than George's 10-15 minutes.  Plus, Andy added a little blue tab to show me exactly where Charlotte had dug herself in.  Good man.  In a few days, I may gently dig up George (on the left) just to document his turd shape with photos, and then return him to the soil.  I'll be setting these containers with papae outside for the winter so they'll develop naturally without the artificial influence of indoor warmth.  I just have to make sure to check on them come spring.  Sometimes I forget I even have them.  Oops.

ps 01/18/16 - Last year I dug up George and inadvertently tossed him over the balcony believing he was a compost chunk.  It wasn't until Charlotte emerged as an adult that I realized what I had done.  George and Charlotte were not smooth, turd-shaped pupae, as I had assumed they'd be.  Charlotte was a fuzzy, pill-shaped object.  As for George, I hope he ended up well.  I have pictures of the adult Charlotte and cannot determine the exact Cucullia sp.

hooded owlet ~ 09/16/14 ~ at home

hooded owlet moth caterpillar
Cucullia sp. (Hodges 10180-10214)

That's George above.  I introduced him in a post from 2 days ago.  I mentioned he was mobile. Very mobile.  I provided him and his cohort Charlotte rather tall flax-leaved horseweed (Erigeron bonariensis) stalks (the same kind I brought them home on), because I was hoping to avoid the daily chore of obtaining smaller, quick-to-wilt clippings from down the street.  This is all to say, I did not have them in a container.  I simply stuck the trimmed stalks in a heavy-bottomed vase with water and a cotton topper to prevent accidental drowning.  Yep, the larvae were loose and fancy free at home, in my home.

And, George made a run for it today.  Twice.  Argh!  At first, I thought he was just searching for fresher food.  He somehow managed to get off the table and onto the floor, but that was about as far as he got.  The second time he disappeared, with a plethora of just-the-right-sized leaves to munch on, it dawned on me he must be looking for a cozy place to pupate.  It took me an hour of carefully searching every nook and cranny (man, I have some serious dust bunnies behind the furniture) until I finally found him nestled in a silty groove of our sliding glass door rail.  Phew!  I worried that if he had found a way to get into my houseplant containers, he'd be lost for good.  Plus, I had vivid images of settling in on the couch to discover something smooshy stuck to my bottom.  Yuck.  Good thing I found George.

If I hadn't dug up the large yellow underwing pupa in my compost a few years back, I don't think I would have known to simply provide a little loose dirt.  I quickly cleaned out a couple containers (another for Charlotte) and dumped in a couple inches of slightly moist compost.  I inserted a crawling stick for later and then set George down on top of the dirt.  After a few minutes of playing dead from the traumatic handling, he started wiggling himself in short spurts and then pauses, head first into the soil.  Shown above was about halfway through.  Within 10-15 minutes, he had dug himself completely under.  I was kinda surprised at how quick he was, because I had never witnessed how this happens before.

While the colors are a bit washed out in my photo, George had already started changing colors, loosing the bright yellow center dorsal stripe and gaining a reddish-brown tailend that looks a lot like a sclerotized head.  Doesn't he look a bit like a millipede here?  Very cool.

hooded owlet ~ 09/14/14 ~ at home

hooded owlet moth caterpillar prolegs (+ aphids)
Cucullia sp.

Yesterday, we walked down Oceanview above the Rec Trail with hopes to spot and cheer on my cousin Bob while he ran the last leg of the PG Triathlon.  We found Bob in the race... and a couple brightly-colored caterpillars on the same tall stalk of roadside weed.

Cats were fresh on my mind, because I had just received an e-mail from Gordon Pratt explaining his techniques for raising tiny blue butterflies and essentially encouraging me to do the same.  Eh, I make for a rather lazy lepidopterist and generally only raise whatever I can easily find (read: large enough to spot from 5 ft. away!) and if I'm in the mood.  It's been a while since I've reared anything, the last ones being Genista broom moths as a pest management favor for J.  I've had moderate luck with larger leps in our relatively cool coastal climate (e.g., Lophocampa success and unidentified woollybear failure), but I haven't reared anything as small as blues (except for the accidental poop-shooting orange tortrix relative).  So, while I figure out the logistics for raising tiny cats (and whether I have the patience for such endeavors), I'm dusting off my rearing containers for a bit of practice with yet another larger caterpillar.

À la Gary Larson, here are the newest additions to our family (note: he/she designations are purely random)...

Charlotte

Those are her gorgeous black prolegs in the first picture above.  She was voracious and slightly smaller than her companion.

George

Slightly larger, less hungry, and definitely more mobile.  Go, George, go!  I quickly stuffed a cotton ball into the vase, so roaming George wouldn't drown.

I didn't measure either one (remember, lazy), but they were maybe 2 inches long.  They seemed to prefer medium-sized leaves off stems that could support their hefty stature.  Within a day, the single stalk I found them on was stripped bare, except for side supporting stems and wispy flower-bud tips, whereupon I ran down the street and collected 2 more stalks for food.  Oy!  I inadvertently brought home lots of other insects from the clippings (aphids, ants, an inchworm, and a syrphid fly larva).

Until I see their adult form, I can't really say which Cucullia sp. these are.  My ID search started with googling images of "zebra striped caterpillar".  No kidding.  Yep, super-scientific.  Not!  But, it works.  That took me to the zebra caterpillar (Melanchra picta), which gave me Hodges number 10293 and a decent starting point.  Btw, Moth Photographer's Group has a excellent series of caterpillar plates for North America.

Cucullia speyeri (Hodges 10190) looks like a superficial match, but Robert W. Poole indicates C. speyeri is not found anywhere near here.  I think he's the same fellow who wrote a Noctuid catalog, so he would know (but I'm not positive).  There are certainly enough look-alikes, here (various), here (thin yellow stripe on side w/ white prolegs and white bindi), here (Hodges 10191), and here (wide yellow stripe on side w/ facial freckles and white bindi, not laetifica), so it's hard to say if this one from San Diego on CalPhotos is correct.  The Cucullia adults are not much easier to tell apart.

 flax-leaved horseweed / asthmaweed

Erigeron bonariensis (aka Conyza bonariensis)

Asteraceae

It's because of the reported native host plant for C. speyeri, horseweed (Erigeron canadensis, aka Conyza canadensis), that I was able to track down the ID of this non-native < 4 ft. tall relative.  I checked the few flowers in bloom, and they definitely look like bonariensis, not canadensis, to me.  I'll try to take pictures of this plant in situ, as the one I have here was otherwise stripped of its leaves and didn't look like it normally would.  More to come...

western gull ~ 07/07/14 ~ at home

western gull chick

Larus occidentalis

I encountered a small surprise as I headed to the laundry room.  Looks like one of this year's Lord of the Dance exited its nest and fell from our roof a little too early.  It's a cute bugger.

ps 08/14/14 - I should note that this little one did not survive the week.  We found it without its head and disemboweled on the side of the road out front.  My friend Bee thought it could have be an opossum that killed the chick.  Over the course of several days, bits went missing until only a pile of feathers remained.  Gross, I know, but hey, it happens.

sunrise ~ 06/13/14 ~ at home

squid boats at sunrise

There seems to be an unusual number of squid boats this year.  They light up the night with their squid lights, green, red, white.  It's Christmas!  Ooof, now that I read that old post, maybe I say there's an unusual number every year?  Ha!  That's partly why we moved bedrooms, because for several months of the year we had very bright night lights.  Thanks to the incredibly fast growing Monterey pines, that soon may not be a problem for us.  Because of the funny way sound carries across the water, I can sometimes hear their conversations on their boats from our balcony.  Many seem to be from outside of the Monterey Bay area.  I wonder if squid fishermen are nomads, following their catch.  I also wonder what else they catch in their nets besides squid, because surely there are other larger animals who would also like to eat squid. The young male sea lions are making a racket down by the Coast Guard Pier, the harbor seals seemed to have doubled in numbers, and a lone, young male elephant seal is being a bully at Hopkins.  There have been high counts for other marine mammal sightings in the Monterey Bay - 56 humpbacks and 150 Pacific white-sided dolphins on June 11, 2014 in a.m. only!  Just to note, last night was grunion greeting for the June full moon.  I didn't go.  Maybe tonight?

wordless Wednesday

western tanager ~ 05/11/14 ~ at home

western tanager in New Zealand Christmas tree

Piranga ludoviciana in Metrosideros excelsa

Myrtaceae

On Saturday, Andy spotted an all-yellow bird in the neighbor's kiwi Christmas tree from our 3rd floor window and described it to me.  He said it looked like a canary with a yellow head and some coloring on the wing, but not all black.  Besides Townsend's warblers over the winter, we rarely get bright yellow birds on this side of town.  So, I queried a friend less than 2 miles away on the ocean side of the Peninsula since she sees yellow birds regularly around her home.  She's also noticed a couple atypical birds with orange heads hanging around.  We finally got a picture of it Sunday after several glimpses of it and a mate as they flew around from the neighbor's tree to the tree tops in the park and back again.  We went running from room to room, too, hoping to see them through one of the windows.  I think they'd be impossible to see from the ground.  I went from guessing it was someone's lost pet parakeet to a female hooded oriole.  Ha!  Nope.  Depending on the angle, that orange crown is not always visible, which makes distinguishing male from female difficult at times.  I wonder how long they'll hang around?  They really seemed to like picking at the red blooms that look very much like bottle brush.

cobweb spider ~ 03/20/14 ~ at home

cobweb spider

Theridiidae

A couple years ago in October, a friend expressed disgust at the amount of cobwebs around our front door.  He even offered to clean the stairwell for me.  I told him to leave it alone, because I was letting nature do my decorating for Halloween.  Ha!  Truth be told, I'm a lazy housekeeper. Then, last spring when dead crane flies and moths* were accumulating at an excessive rate, I finally did the deed and attacked everything with a broom, vacuum, and a rag.  Quick and dirty. I discovered that a big broom is ineffective against the nickel-sized tan egg sacs that are almost always laid against a corner or crevice.  Bugger.  The spiders dropped and fled for their lives. 

So, I've been watching her up by the porch light the past few months.  I started worrying that she might drop on my head.  Not likely, but still.  This year I decided it was time for Katie's Spider Relocation Program (KSRP) to kick into gear.  I armed myself with an old sock, an old toothbrush, a wide-mouth jar, and a magazine paper advert.  Because of her sticky cobweb, it was really hard to catch her.  I may have accidentally dented her abdomen.  Phooey. Hand-in-sock and the toothbrush worked wonders with removing webbing and those stubborn egg sacs.  She, her eggs, and a smaller male companion are now spending the rest of their days in the neighboring park.

For blogging purposes, I had hoped this was the false black widow (Steatoda grossa).  I can't be sure.  None of my pictures clearly show the markings on the front part of her abdomen.  It looks like there might be a lighter colored stripe that curves around, but it's hard to tell.  I'm satisfied only going to family for ID.  Sonja had me use the a Golden Guide Spiders and Their Kin when I fielded spider ID calls at the museum.  I have the older green cover 1990 edition, and it's still pretty handy if you're not fussed about getting exact species. 

* Moths found in the stairwell:  plume and nola, Gabriola, geometrids and pug, Edwards' glassy-wing, and painted tiger.

rainbow ~ 02/02/14 ~ at home

double rainbow from home

February 2, 2014

Yeah!  'Bout time.  Supposedly we had some precipitation on Thursday for a whopping total of 0.05".  I think we get more than that on a decently foggy summer's day.  And before that, the last time it rained was December 7, 2013 with 0.25", which got our butts out for a Fort Ord hike.  Crazy dry winter.  As I write this, it's slowly, but steadily continuing to sprinkle.  Yay!

ps - Our Monterey Bay view is quickly becoming obscured by trees! Compare this picture with one 5 years ago on December 15, 2008 and one 3 years ago on February 19, 2011.

wordless Wednesday

black-tailed deer ~ 11/17/13 ~ at home

 Columbian black-tailed deer
Odocoileus hemionus columbianus

I have yet to figure out if there's a seasonal pattern for when the different groups of deer visit the end of our drive, because it all seems so random. In the past, I've seen groups of females and singular older bucks this time of year. These two young bucks, a first for November, lolled around all day on the barely-there green grass patches and occasionally tangled antlers together.  The day after I took this picture, a third young buck joined these two.  They made me very nervous as they stood at attention only 10 feet from where I was trying to get into the garage.  I've heard various stories of local folks getting into tussles with the deer, to the detriment of people, pets, and cars.

As I was rereading up on Columbian black-tailed deer this morning from all the links I've provided in past IDs, I want to offer kudos to the CA Department of Fish and Wildlife for their excellent "A Sportsman's Guide to Improving Deer Habitat in California".  It's very well written.

habitat ~ 10/14/13 ~ Fort Ord - Army Lands

 Fort Ord controlled burn
October 14, 2013

Here's the smoke plume from 8 minutes, 1 hour, and almost 2 hours after they started the fire at 10:20am this morning.  I'll admit that I used to really detest these fires.  The orange sky is disorienting, and everyone seems to get grouchy.  I blogged about them in 2009 and 2010.  I don't think they burned the last 2 years.  One year's cancellation was because they discovered such big unexploded ordnances on the surface of the ground that it would have been extremely dangerous to have a fire.  Something about the potential for shrapnel to cross into residential areas?  Now that I've been on a few BRAC field trips, I understand why they burn and am a little more tolerant.  With all the keep out signs, I'm amazed we don't hear about exploded deer or pigs.  We'll probably have a couple more fires before the year is out.  I'm quite afraid of wildfires, so even though these are "controlled", they still scare me a bit.

ps - BigSurKate posted photos of this fire as well.  Here are additional local news links: Monterey County Herald, KSBW, and KION.

pss 10/15/13 - Another day, another fire: BigSurKate, Monterey County Herald, KSBW,  and KION.  Units 10 and 7, plus is a little extra, were burned this year.

pss 10/22/13 - It's interesting to juxtapose our local controlled burns with fires down under, like this post from BunyipCo.

pss 10/26/13 - These 2 burns are still making the local news:  Monterey County Herald and KSBW.

pss 03/18/14 - I received a notification that there will be no prescribed burns in 2014.  Yay?

sunset ~ 10/06/13 ~ at home

sunset from home

October 6, 2013

It's been all about sunsets for me lately.  This day we went to the memorial of a friend who lived a good long time.  With her failing health, it was time for her to go.  The last I saw her I had stopped by to give her the news that another friend of ours had died.  I have fond memories of her ambling over to our place early in the morning, hair sticking out everywhere and wrapped in a shawl that always slid off one shoulder.  He would make coffee in his Pavoni, and I would make buttered toast.  The three of us would sit at the small breakfast table in the morning sun and gossip about everyone we knew.  Goodbye, Yo.  Now, I'm starting to feel superstitious.  I think I got that my from my grandmother.  Things happen in threes?

sunrise ~ 09/01/13 ~ at home

sunrise from home

September 1, 2013

We heard there were over 100 humpback whale sightings yesterday due to anchovies in the Bay, so we're keeping an eye on the water more than usual.  It's been absolutely gorgeous here the past few days.  Lots of sunshine, finally; June gloom fog that last through August is long gone.  September and October are the hottest months in Monterey with an average high temperature hovering around 70°F (21.1°C).  The water has been extremely quiet, despite it being comfortably breezy.  Based on my observations from past years, it should remain quiet until the autumnal equinox later this month when the waves kick up in a big, loud way.  Hopefully, I'll be finishing up my physical therapy from my bicycle accident, and then I'll be able to enjoy the fall changes out on the trails.  Until then...

ps 09/07/13 - Well, that was a load of hooey.  The waves are very loud this morning, much earlier in the month than I expected.  So much for my past observations.

pss 09/08/13 - A belted kingfisher came flying into view out of the fog this morning, trailing its distinctive rattle.  Ha!  The fog has returned in all its glory.  I'm enjoying the variation.

Pacific chorus frog ~ 08/29/13 ~ at home

Pacific chorus frog and tadpole, bladder snails, and duckweed
Pseudacris sierra, Physa spp. (aka Physella spp.), and Lemna sp.

Araceae

Look!  Find the frog.  This is the first one to crawl from my 2013 spring hatch.  I've enjoyed having them again this year.  Instead of obsessing over whether their water was clean enough, I let the water stand all summer to create a more natural environment.  I'm guessing this may help explain why I have frogs this early, compared to the 6-14 months it eventually took last time.

Considering my various aquatic plants have come from different sources, I've also had additional bladder snail stowaways.  I'm starting to think I have a couple different species, some with white lines and others with a more translucent, lacquered tortoiseshell appearance.

Also, I finally looked up duckweed.  Had no idea they're native.  I always thought they were introduced and problematic.  Guess not.

ps - As I was searching for embedded links, I came across a relatively new United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) online offering called ID Tools.  My favorite so far is the Terrestrial Mollusc Tool, especially considering my sister-in-law (aka garden slug hunter extraordinaire) and I searched high and low for approachable slug experts to little avail.  This site is my first online ID resource recommendation listed under gastropods.  Awesome.

gone

sunrise from home

December 5, 2012

Gone.  This is the label I use in my Google Reader to mark blogs I follow which haven't had new posts in several months.  The list seems to be growing by the day.  I miss some of those bloggers as if they were real life friends who have moved away.  I wonder how they're doing and hope life is treating them well.  Every so often someone surprises me and comes back from being gone, like The Ohio Nature Blog and The Skeptical Moth.  Dang kids and new jobs seem to get in the way of regular blogging.  

I can't say I have those excuses.  I have been a bit lackluster in my blogging routine this year. The dry dreary weather and now windy rain have discouraged me from going out as much as I would like.  In large part to being otherwise preoccupied, I have also missed posting whole sections from my photo archives, like a camping trip to Morro Bay and a couple outings to Fort Ord.  I have already ID'd many things that are easy to photograph and narrow down to species; now all I have left are annoyingly perplexing unknowns and exceptionally crappy photos. However, I'm not giving up, yet.  My hiking should inform my blogging, rather than the other way around as it has been in the past year or so. I think this transformation of intent has really shown in a lack of curiosity in my blog posts.  I want to get back to truly enjoying hiking for all the things that drew me to this activity in the first place - being outside, clearing my head, getting a little bit of exercise, and simply enjoying nature. I'm not closing the door on Nature ID, even though my posts may become fewer and fewer for a while.  I'll see you when I have something fantastic to share. Blog on!