west coast lady ~ 10/01/14 ~ Cooper Molera Garden

west coast lady nectaring on common heliotrope

Vanessa annabella nectaring on Heliotropium arborescens
(Shapiro)

Boraginaceae

I've seen a fair number of west coast ladies this unusually warm coastal summer, but only here in town since I'm rarely out in the field late enough in the afternoon to see these beauties.  When I decided to pursue studying butterflies this year, Andy made a request early on that I be home for dinner if at all possible.  Eating dinner together is important to us, and he used to bring me take-out when I worked late at the office.  The nice thing now is he doesn't mind cooking if I'm too pooped out from a day of hiking.  It may seem old-fashioned, but it works for us.

Usually, I'll spot the west coast ladies swirling-flirting with their more numerous and bossy cousins, the red admirals, around tall west-facing backdrops, be it trees or buildings.  This particular spot in the Cooper Molera Garden is great for seeing all kinds of butterflies because of the south-sided warmth of the surrounding historic buildings and this pleasantly scented garden bush.  The flowers look to me like a cross between heliotropes and fiddlenecks, but the soft leaves and huge bushy shape throw me.  The volunteer-run Cooper Store has several handfuls of index-carded photos of the plants in the garden with their IDs.  The next time I'm in, I'll try to remember to look-up this garden plant.

ps 10/15/14 - Thanks to Ken's comments, I now have an ID and corrected the above.

moths ~ 09/28/13 ~ Rocky Creek

 

Here are all the moths from night 2 of white sheet lighting.  Again, I'll add the moth IDs at a later time.  I welcome anyone who wants to help me ID these coastal moths in the comments.

I'm surprised at how sentimental I became while sorting through these moth photos.  The feeling reminds me of "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost.  My only published papers were 6 checklists of moths with Sonja Teraguchi.  I googled to see if it's out there on the internet, since the pubication predates Y2K.  Hey, it's on eBay.  Cool.  I think?  It's also referenced in a paper by Roy Rings in The Great Lakes Entomologist.  Very cool.

moths ~ 09/27/13 ~ Rocky Creek

 

I'll add the moth IDs at a later time.  Thanks to Pete at Essig, I borrowed Moths of Western North America by Jerry Powell and Paul Opler.  It's a spendy tome at $100 a pop, so I wanted to take a good look before I purchased.  I haven't had the patience to sit down with the hefty book, yet.  If anyone would like to help get the ID ball rolling, please comment.

CA buckeye ~ 12/10/11 ~ Los Padres Dam

California buckeye
Aesculus californica
more information
Sapindaceae (formerly Hippocastanaceae)

I wanted to show how big our CA buckeye seeds get, much larger than the native buckeyes (A. glabra and A. flava) and introduced horse chestnut (A. hippocastanum) seeds I found when I lived in Ohio. During our hike, we had a fun time rolling the prolific seeds down the ravines to see how far they would go; it was like rolling bocce jacks over a rough terrain.

I'm surprised I don't have additional seasonal posts of the CA buckeye, considering it's noticeably one of the first trees to sprout leaves in late winter and one of the first trees to drop leaves in late summer, which I read somewhere was due to lack of water. I'll have to rectify this posting deficiency. For much better information than I could ever provide, check out Clare's buckeye post at Curbstone Valley Farm.

got squid?

Chennai, India - neighborhood market
November 8, 2006

I've been looking into market squid, squid boats, and local customs of fishing, because I have a series of additional squid boat pics to post on Nature ID. Then I remembered I had these pics from India. I saw boats on the beach, but I don't know if they use nets and lights like we do here. These guys were such hams for the camera. Notice the guard-looking fellows in the back? Hmm? Now, I'm curious to know how they got their squid...

ps 06/14/11 - I just discovered I never got around to posting the additional boat pics from Monterey Bay. Will try to get to that at some point.

bush lupine ~ 03/04/10 ~ Carmel Valley Road

bush lupine and fiddlenecks
Fabaceae & Boraginaceae

I'm feeling too tired to look up the genus species names for these flowers right now... just want to go through some of my hundreds of pics from several outings the past few weeks. I'll edit this post at a later date.

redwood ~ 08/02/09 ~ Rocky Creek

gnome in coast redwood
Sequoia sempervirens
Cupressaceae

This is simply a place-holder post to remind me to add some other pics (plus, it makes me laugh). Over the weekend we were camping down near Bixby Bridge towards Big Sur off of the old Hwy 1 on an 800+ acre private property heaven. A group of us were attempting to blaze a trail to the beach by following the creek. Even with a machete in the lead, we didn't have much success and gave up within an hour to enjoy some cool, canned refreshment. Great fun was had by all! The gnome was a surprise find, sitting peacefully in a burnt-out redwood. No one knew how long it had been sitting there or who had hiked in far enough to place this woodsy watcher.

longhorn beetle
Cerambycidae

This beetle landed on my husband after his trail run at Richardson Grove State Park. Its antennae were extraordinary.

longhorn beetle
Cerambycidae

We probably wouldn't have noticed this on the tree if it hadn't been flying right past us before it landed.

longhorn beetle
Cerambycidae

It's amazing what one can find in the bathroom out in the woods!