After breakfast Sunday, I did the dishes (did them about four million times this weekend, no dish can loiter as it's ant season), did a couple of other tasks and then booted up and started on my morning walk. Got up the hill to the neighbor's gate, then back down past the site of the bones of a long-deceased horse, followed the top of Deer Ridge and dropped down past Altar Rock, then home as I was running out of water and getting hungry. Directly after lunch, I didn't feel "done" so I went back out and did a full loop around the Northwest Territory including a swing down to the river.


Early(ish) August nature report: the manzanitas are producing a good crop of berries and the coyotes are eating them, judging by the red pebbly nature of the coyote poop around. (Yeah I know sorry, but you can't help noticing.) Was able to confirm an identification of the White-belted Ringtail dragonfly as two of them held still long enough and allowed me close enough to really observe. Saw a kestrel, a red-shouldered hawk and three wood ducks. About every two hundred yards or so, I would cause another ground squirrel alarm call - a sharp chip chirrupupup. The ground squirrel population is robust as usual.

I wanted to see if the turpentine weed was growing this year, so was careful to take a look in the area where it's grown in the past and it's doing well. It's an interesting plant - not much to look at but it smells strongly like turpentine. While I was looking at those, I noticed a white something or other on a tarweed plant and went over to take a look.

The white was an egg sac of a good-sized very green spider. She was really guarding that sac - as soon as I bent over to take a look, she wrapped her legs round it and made sure it was secure. Post-walk research shows that she is a Green Lynx spider, Peucetia viridans, a fairly common spider in the southern half of the US. Evidently they are very good at pouncing on their prey, hence the "lynx" name. It was quite windy so I'm surprised any of these photos came out at all - here's a record shot of this little ol' gal:


I got back from that walk around 3, about an hour later Dino proposed that we go take another swim in the river, which sounded like a good idea. We ended up not swimming much; we found it more interesting to watch the fish. We got into one of the deeper pools (not very deep, maybe waist high to me, but if you squat a bit, you're all in). The water was clear enough for us to see the fish checking us out - there seem to be two kinds. One is some sort of split-tail minnow, although which species we haven't figured out. The other we haven't come close to identifying yet at all - these had a long dorsal fin, all fins with white edges, tail fin with an additional brownish stripe, and a dark spot behind the gills. While there at the river, we saw a large yellow and black butterfly, a speedy flier which we've identified in the past but couldn't remember. Didn't get around to looking that one up yet; it may be marked in the butterfly book. The other interesting find were several stands of pennyroyal.


I had a very difficult time yesterday morning getting myself in the proper frame of mind for going to work. I felt very wistful and found myself wishing that I could just wander around every day looking at interesting critters and plants and taking pictures.

HIgh Summer Wildlife Report

It must be high season for bringing babies out because as I was getting ready to leave for work this morning, there under the big seed feeder were three hen turkeys and about a dozen juveniles. I watched them for several minutes but then it came time for me to leave so I greeted the mamas (Good Morrrrning Ladies!) while they hustled the little ones back down toward the spring.

And, I saw a bobkitten on the way home day before yesterday. He or she scooted across the road just above the ford and below the second gate and ran down the creek bed toward the waterfall area. This probably explains why I've been having so many bobcat sightings recently - I suspect that I've been seeing the mama bobcat hunting for her babies/baby. The area I saw the kitten is riddled with ground squirrel burrows, and at the moment there are vast quantities of ground squirrel babies, which are undoubtedly viewed as perfect hunting practice.

Photo has no relation to the topic, it's one I've been waiting to work on because I wanted to try the HDR feature of the latest version of Photoshop, which upgrade arrived on my doorstep this week. 

Whole New Outlook on the Chowchilla River

Why didn't we think of it before? Mid-morningish, I was puttering around, sweating, wanting to get outside if only to move around a little bit. (OK I also did not really want to scrub the floors and other low-interest tasks.) I got to thinking about a certain river, not too far away from this very house and realized that in the years since we bought the part of the property that has river acreage we never went swimming. For some reason, we never connected the dots. Upshot: we put on our suits, hopped on the ATV and went down to the swimmin' hole! It was awesome! Aside from just feeling excellent in terms of cooling down, it was a good enough hole to actually swim in! And on top of all that, it was a way to learn about the Chowchilla River from an entirely new perspective. We saw a new kind of dragonfly - we think it's a White-belted Ringtail, but we didn't have our binoculars so it was just naked eye. We'll have to go back later and hope to see it again.

After we'd had enough we sat on a log to dry off and ate apples. Some of the horses were hanging around near the salt lick not too far away, so I walked over and tried to call Bill the Mule over by showing him the core and clucking at him. No go. So I ostentatiously took a bite of what was left and smacked and chomped. That did the trick. Once he was done with that apple, he went over and pestered Dino for the other leavings. We are both fond of that mule; he is a very handsome animal.

On an unrelated note, Dino pointed out this spider on the garage door handle, so a record shot was required. This one is probably a Silver Argiope.

Home

The topic of "home" has been on my mind of late, for various reasons. The more I think about it, the more grateful I am that I've found my home - which isn't so much the house we're in, but the land and the area itself.

Proof of the point below. This lovely spot is someone's stock pond - I always slow down when I pass on my way to work every day because there are sometimes Canada geese visiting, as well as mergansers.

At supper last night, we watched a bobcat come up out of the spring area below the house and nose around the ground squirrel burrows around the outside of the orchard fence. He or she didn't find anybody to catch though. That bobcat looked like it had little black socks on all four legs, it was just beautiful - we always have binoculars on the dining room table so we can just grab them when a good opportunity arrives.

On the other hand, this morning while I was in the garage working out, a HUGE brown beetle came in under the garage door and scared the wits out of me; I'm surprised I didn't wake Dino up. That thing was at least two and a half inches long and I am not even close to kidding. We've seen them before, they're called California Prionus (Prionus californicus) and I did not run for the camera believe you me - ha ha I just ran. Between the bugs and the black widow I just know is lurking, I'm always on the alert in there.

Some Stages of Metamorphosis Are Butt Ugly

After doing some more chores and spending about an hour in the garden deadheading roses, I loaded up the camera and went for a solo walk. I did a sweaty uphill climb to a neighbor's gate and then headed down to the river. I wanted to see if the Bullock's Orioles were still around near last year's nest (no) and as I came up to the top of the little hill where I was going to watch for them, I scared up a wild pig from his afternoon siesta. It was just the one and I can't imagine how it was I got so close since I was huffing and puffing up the hill, tromping through dry grass, snapping branches and generally making noise. Off he went at a good clip.

When I got to the river, I saw a pond turtle make a movement and then hide next to a big rock. He then did a really good imitation of a rock himself - if he hadn't moved, I never would have seen him. I took some pictures, but oddly enough, it looks like I took photos of a rock.

Not far from the turtle/rock, I saw this big tadpole - it's a European bullfrog. Not a pretty sight. That sort of short stick thing to the left of it is actually a wiggly nymph of some insect - blech, there are certain life forms that give me the shudders.

The Small and the Shed

The first thing that happened after I'd gotten the groceries unpacked Friday night was that my husband pulled me into the garage to show me these:

Baby spiders! A fresh hatch - there were easily a hundred of them and so small that they looked more like flecks of sawdust on the web. I'm surprised my camera captured anything at all. (Note to self - start saving for that macro lens you want.) Although we - well, Dino actually - just cleared out a huge black widow web with attendant BW, we are pretty sure these are not her babies, they are actually rather more of a light brown color pre-Photoshop.

After that, we took another mini-nature walk to the lower garden where there was a shed snake skin - a perfect shed with no fraying on the skin at all. Don't know what kind of snake, but not a rattler. This snake was long and thin; the skin was a little more than four feet long with a tail that tapered to nothing more than the thinnest pencil-lead width tip. Maybe a whipsnake?

Rescue

Yesterday, while clearing out an area of the lower garden where some "stuff" had been temporarily stored, we found a metal screen with diamond-shaped holes about 3/4" wide. In one of the holes was a fence lizard. It had gotten its head, one front leg and shoulder through the mesh but its belly was too plump and it got stuck. It looked dead. We set the screen aside and continued with our tasks. When the time came to find a place for the screen, I picked it up and while admiring the lovely blue belly of the lizard - since it's difficult to get a good look at them what with their ability to run fast - it started struggling! It was still alive! The lizard rescue team sprang into action.

We took the screen to the operating room, aka the picnic table. We gathered the surgical tools. The assistant (me) held the screen firmly while the surgeon carefully yet forcefully made several cuts in the wire and slowly moved the cut ends away from the body of the patient. The surgeon gently nudged the lizard back through the mesh until its entire body was free and we placed the mesh on the ground in the recovery area. The lizard stayed motionless for quite some time while we went about our other tasks. We were a little concerned that the lizard would end up as food for someone else, so I found a cardboard box top and assembled a little shelter. When I went to find a rock to prop up the top, that galvanized the lizard to find its legs and off it went at high speed to hide in the culvert. Long term prognosis: unknown. We're pretty sure it won't come back for a follow-up visit.

Other items on the beautification project to-do list: I got the upper garden weeding project done in substance yesterday - I'll do a second pass today through some of the original areas but it's looking good right now.

Dino has been extremely busy this last week - looks like he has plans for more next week - in continuing to knock back the dang thistles.

In other doings - last weekend a friend came for an overnight visit. We decided to play tourist and went for a steam train ride on the Yosemite Sugar Pine logger. The whistle blew, the wheels of the train went clickety-clack, it was grand fun.