jimson weed ~ 06/08/11 ~ Pinnacles

western jimson weed / sacred datura
Datura wrightii
Solanaceae

At last, I found a native jimson weed. Perhaps the reason why I haven't noticed this before is because it blooms in the evening through to the next morning. Unless I'm camping, I usually don't hike in the evenings. Descriptions of its scent range from "sweetly fragrant" flowers to "rank smelling" foliage. Like it's non-native cousin D. stramonium that I've seen at Fort Ord, extracts are narcotic. Native Americans used preparations in ceremonies.

scrub-jay ~ 06/07/11 ~ at home

western scrub-jay
Aphelocoma californica

Mom is apparently showing her young how to wait on our balcony and look into the windows to see if we're around to feed them peanuts. I posted pictures of mom and one of her young from May 29, 2011. I'm amazed at how big the juveniles have grown in 9 days. The tops of their heads are quickly getting more blue feathers. They're very curious and have checked out all my container plants and moved my decorative sea shells around. I worry they may fish for the Pacific chorus frog tadpoles I'm raising, which should have another 2 months before they metamorphose. I'm always very careful to not leave my caterpillars exposed when I change clippings; I've seen the jays enthusiastically eat insects.

black-tailed deer ~ 06/06/11 ~ at home

Columbian black-tailed deer
Odocoileus hemionus columbianus

posted 06/23/11 - There are twins fawns again this year. I can't believe I haven't seen them before now. I really like the first picture of the spotted fawn against the dappled oak leaves. Poor mom couldn't get any privacy.

ps 06/28/11 - In response to the comments about fawns with lumps, here's an informative website Jennifer recommended: www.fawnrescue.org.

about the organization of Nature ID

sunrise from home
June 6, 2011

Nature ID is my online nature journal. It serves as a learning tool and helps me keep track of what, when, and where. As such, I post and organize this blog in a peculiar way so that I can quickly reference a past post. However, this doesn't make it easy for people to "follow" my blog.

To cover the when, I frequently backdate. This means the date header on an entry is the date I took the pictures, not necessarily the date of when I posted to the blog. My blog archives serve as actual hiking/observation dates. I'm currently posting from a hike on May 14, 2011 at restricted Fort Ord - Army Lands.

For the what and the where, I liberally use labels. At the bottom of every post and grouped to the right in the sidebar are highlighted labels that link back to specific Nature ID posts (this is different from WordPress blogs, where a "label" will take you to a listing of multiple blogs with that particular tag - I don't personally like that, so I don't do it).

When I first began this blog on May 6, 2009, I only had 3 labels: flowers, animals, and Fort Ord. I now have 472 labels in multiple groups as shown in the sidebar to the right. Scrolling down from here to eternity is inconvenient. I'd like to remove the lengthy label lists. So, I'm creating an index page (shown as a tab along the top) to help followers navigate within Nature ID.

ps 06/11/11 - Thanks to Janet's comments, I've started adding titles to my ID posts (what, when, and where) to help those who use blog dashboards, readers, and aggregators to easily click directly to specific entries.

pss 07/17/11 - A skeletal index page is up and running. I finally removed the lengthy lists to the right and am in the process of creating grouped index posts which show labels in general categories.