It's a Bit Embarassing

While going up the big grade on my way to work the other morning, my attention was drawn to the pretty wildflowers that are blooming now.  All I can say in my defense is that yellow is my favorite color.

Tarweed.

No Reason Beyond Cuteness

Hey there Oak Titmouse, I'm lookin' at you too!

Dry Time

Last weekend, we decided to take advantage of a not-so-hot spell to go for (surprise) a bird walk. We took the red gate/bridge/upriver-on-the-west bank route although we did a variation about halfway and stuck close to the river where normally we would walk the bluff above. Harder walking but it turned out to be absolutely fascinating because of the wildflowers and various native grasses that we spent some time looking at. We also found a blackberry thicket where some of the berries were ripe - yum.


We saw 27 species of birds and 4 species of dragonflies and one of damselfly. Furry four-leggeds - we saw only the ubiquitous ground squirrel, but we did spend some time debating about some of the paw prints we saw in the dust of the road - fox perhaps?

Spent some time trying to find out what these are by looking in our Grasses of California book.  No luck there, but a friend of mine clued me in:  rattlesnake grass (Briza media), also known as great quaking grass.  I guess it wasn't in the book because it's not native.  Now that I know what it is, I've been finding it other places as well.

 
 
We feel sad that our equine friend King moved to the Great Grazing Land this last week. I hope Pelton doesn't miss him too much.

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.