I got up around 5:30 this morning so I could get over to the Effie Yeaw Nature Preserve and begin my monitoring of my milkweed plot there for evidence of Monarch Butterflies. I finished that (with the help of my friend and co-naturalist Roxanne Moger) around 8:30.
It was still relatively cool outside, so Roxanne and I
decided to put our tools back into our car and walk for a little while. We came across some cooperative squirrels and
a Desert Cottontail rabbit, and also checked out the tree where I’d seen the
feral beehive earlier. There were about
three times as many bees at the spot, so I’m assuming the queen has decided to
set up shop there.
The surprise sighting was coming across another doe – with twin fawns! She was keeping them well-hidden in the shade and tall grass, but we were able to catch glimpses of them. And we couldn’t help but chuckle when the babies went stotting through the grass with mom chasing after them. They’re so tiny but soooo active! They’re the first fawns I’ve seen this year and that’s always exciting.
As we were leaving the preserve, I could hear a Ground Squirrel’s alarm call and looked around to see if I could spot what the trouble might be. I saw movement overhead and spotted an adult Red-Shouldered Hawk fly overhead. It landed in a nearby tree and then sat there for quite a while, so we were able to get quite a few photos of it. So, even though our walk was only a single loop, we got to see quite a bit… which is always fun.
I got up around 5:30 this morning and immediately headed out to the Effie Yeaw Nature Preserve for my weekly volunteer trail walking thing. It was cool, around 55°, when I got there, but as soon as the sun got up a little higher in the sky it started to heat up. It ended up around 75° by the time I left the preserve. There were some latent clouds overhead which meant it was humid, too. Not my favorite.
Along with the usual suspects – deer, Acorn Woodpeckers and Wild Turkeys – I got to see quite a few fledgling birds out today. The fledglings are fully feathered and the same size as the adults, but not quite adept at flying yet, so they spend a lot of time around ground level begging their parents to feed them. They’re so bossy! I watched one little House Wren fledgling sitting on top of a pile of old tree limbs. For a while, he tried posturing like the adults do with his little tail standing straight up behind him, but then he got tired and just sat and dozed… until he saw or heard one of his parents flying by. Then he’d perk up and open his mouth wide expecting food to be dropped into it. Hah! Although I could see the parents flitting around where he was, they also had other fledglings in the nearby shrubbery (which I could hear buzzing away), and because I was standing between the shrubs and the baby on the woodpile, they wouldn’t go near him. After getting quite a few photos of the little guy, I decided I’d better move on or he wouldn’t get fed at all.
I also came across two fledgling California Towhees. Now, the California Towhees usually look kind of obese and drab to me, but the babies… they were soooo scrabbly looking; total bed-heads! They were sitting close to one another with their feathers all fluffed out, so they looked extra fat and messy. Made me chuckle. One was content to sit and wait for their parents to bring breakfast, but the other one was extra hungry, I guess, and kept tugging at the dead grass near them trying to get something out of it. Can’t get milk out of a stick, son. Sorry.
California Towhee, Melozone crissalis
Further on along the trail I could hear a parent and fledgling Red-Shouldered Hawk calling to one another. The fledgling was very loud and persistent, demanding to be fed, and the parent would call back him as if to say, “Shut up! I’m working on it!” I eventually came across the fledgling sitting up in the bare branches of a tree. (He was so loud he was announcing to everyone exactly where he was.) He saw me and tried to scramble away to other branches but was still unsure of how to make his wings work, so he looked pretty clumsy. He stuck to the shadows as much as he could then, but I was still able to get a few photos of him. (And I’m assuming he was a male based on his coloring; females are usually larger and have less vivid colors.)
I also found one of the parents, sitting quietly now in the low branches of another tree right along the side of the trail, just above eye-level, ignoring the fledgling. Totally habituated to people, it didn’t move from its perch, but kept its eye on me as a passed by and stopped to take some photos. I think they’re such handsome birds.
Among the other things I found today were a few Pumpkin Galls on the leaves of a Live Oak tree. It’s kind of early in the season for those, so I was surprised to see them. They’re super-tiny galls, and if you don’t know where or how they develop you’d completely miss them. Right now, they’re pale green, but come fall they’ll turn dark orange and fall off the leaves onto the ground were the little larvae will pupate through the winter.
I found a few Eastern Fox Squirrels and some California Ground Squirrels. I was surprised to see one of the Fox Squirrels climbing through poison oak and eating the berries! Yikes! I mean, I knew that the toxin in poison oak don’t generally harm wildlife, but I’d never actually seen any of the animals eating the stuff before. I also saw a Fox Squirrel eating the husk off of a black walnut and watched a Ground Squirrel eating the tops off of some other plants. (I think that gal was blind on one side, but once she saw me she moved too fact for me to get photos of her blind side.)
The other cool thing I spotted along the trail was that feral honeybees have found the tree along the Pond Trail again and seem to be setting up house there. I saw them last year (I think it was) checking out the big opening in the side of the tree, but they left the site after a few weeks. I guess the queen didn’t like it. Now the opening is more covered with plants, so maybe it will feel more “protected” to them and they’ll stay there this time. I let the gals in the nature center know they were there, so hopefully they can discourage hikers from walking off the trail to see the bees. We’ll see.
A feral hive of European Honeybees, Apis mellifera
I walked for about 4 hours and then headed home.
Species List:
Acorn Woodpecker, Melanerpes formicivorus,
American Bullfrog, Lithobates catesbeianus,
American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis,
American Robin, Turdus migratorius,
Ash-Throated Flycatcher, Myiarchus cinerascens,
Black Phoebe, Sayornis nigricans,
Black Walnut, Juglans nigra,
Black-Tailed Jackrabbit, Lepus californicus,
Blue Elderberry, Sambucus nigra ssp. cerulea,
Blue Oak, Quercus douglasii,
Bordered Plant Bug, Largus californicus,
Bur Chervil, Anthriscus Sylvestris,
Bushtit, American Bushtit, Psaltriparus minimus,
California Black Walnut, Juglans californica,
California Ground Squirrel, Otospermophilus beecheyi,
California Mugwort, Artemisia douglasiana,
California Penstamon, Penstemon californicus,
California Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly, Battus philenor hirsuta,
I got up around 5:00 am, let the dog out to go potty and fed him his breakfast. Then I headed over to the Effie Yeaw Nature Preserve for a walk. I was joined by fellow volunteer trail walker, Mary Messenger (“The Other Mary”). The weather today was beautiful, cool, breezy, sunny… in the 70’s. Just gorgeous. I was able to keep the bedroom window open for most of the day to let the fresh air in.
At the preserve today the sightings were few and far between, and Nature was playing keep-away (we’d see something, but it was gone before we could get any decent photos of it). It took quite a while before we spotted a single deer, and I’m hoping that’s because a lot of the does are off having their babies right now. Among the deer, I did see a couple of bucks in their velvet, including the one with the wonky antlers (long on one side, stunted on the other).
And I came across a male Wild
Turkey that I assumed was sick. It was hunkered down on the ground and
breathing in short breaths, as though it might have been in pain. It let me get to within touching distance of
it and made no effort to get up or get moving.
My brain goes to the two most pervasive threats to the turkeys: rat
poison and West Nile virus. The turkeys
in the preserve are surrounded by a huge residential area… and those nasty
poison-pellets folks put out for rats look like food to the birds. And we’re in the middle of the mosquito
season, so West Nile can be a factor for many animals. There’s no way to know what was affecting
this papa, though, unless he can be caught and examined.
I took a photo of the turkey with some of the landscape markers so it would be easier to locate him at a later date/time if necessary.
According to the National Wild Turkey Federation, other things can also impact on Wild Turkeys, such as avian pox (which can result in the lesions in the esophagus and make breathing difficult for the birds) and several different kinds of equine encephalitis. (Usually, though, the birds are carriers of the equine diseases and don’t succumb to them themselves.) Avian influenza and Mycoplasmosis can also be problematic, but they usually only affect domestic turkeys kept in small confined areas where they’re breathing each other’s crap for days on end. Poor babies.
On a happier note, we did come across a very cooperative Turkey Vulture who was preening himself on the end of a large barren branch in a tree… and on that same branch was an Eastern Fox Squirrel preening, too. So, we got quite a few photos of both of them.
The Other Mary had to cut her walk short because she had a lunch date with an old friend, but I kept walking for another hour or so after she left, so I put in about 4 hours of walking before heading home again.
Species List:
Acorn Woodpecker, Melanerpes formicivorus,
American Bullfrog, Lithobates catesbeianus,
American Robin, Turdus migratorius,
Ash-Throated Flycatcher, Myiarchus cinerascens,
Black-Tailed Jackrabbit, Lepus californicus,
Blue Elderberry, Sambucus nigra ssp. cerulea,
Blue Oak, Quercus douglasii,
California Black Walnut, Juglans californica,
California Ground Squirrel, Otospermophilus beecheyi,
California Mugwort, Artemisia douglasiana,
California Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly, Battus philenor hirsuta,
Up at 5:00 am again. I let the dog out to go potty and fed him his breakfast then headed over to the Effie Yeaw Nature Preserve for my weekly volunteer Trail-Walking gig. It was a gorgeous 58° when I got to the preserve and was overcast, so it never got over about 68° while I was there. Perfect walking weather.
One of the first things I saw was a Red-Shouldered Hawk carrying nesting materials. First she flew over my head, then she landed on a tree to get a better grip on the grasses she was holding before taking off again. These hawks only have one brood a year, but often work on the nest throughout the year to keep it clean. It’s no uncommon for them to use the same nest over several season if the first nest is successful. Later in my walk, I went by where I knew one of the hawks’ nest was and found a juvenile (fledgling) sitting out beside it squawking for its parents to come feed it. It was capable of feeding itself, but some of these young’uns milk the I’m-just-a-baby thing for quite a while. While it was near the nest, it was hard to get photos of it because it was backlit, but later it flew out and I was able to get a few better photos of it when it landed in a nearby tree.
There were a lot of deer out today, but I didn’t see any fawns. I DID see a couple of bucks, though, both of them still in their velvet, a 2-pointer and one with wonky antlers (one super-long one and one stumpy one). The 2-pointer was walking with a doe, and when I stood on the trail to take photos of them, he decided he didn’t like that. He stepped right out toward me with a very determined look on his face. (Bucks can get real possessive of “their” does.) I knew he wouldn’t rush me and try to gore me because he was still in his velvet. In that state, the antlers are super-sensitive to touch, and if he rammed me, he’d actually hurt himself. But, he could still outrun me mash me with his hooves if he had a mind to, so I put my head down and back away. That seemed to be enough of a submissive posture to him, and he returned to his doe. As beautiful as the deer are, I have to remind myself that they’re still wild animals and will do whatever their instincts tell them to do – even in a nature park.
I heard and caught glimpses of several Nuttall’s Woodpeckers on my walk, but never got enough of a look at one to take its picture. Those birds enjoy teasing people, I swear. They’re really loud about announcing themselves in flight, but then hide from you once they land.
The wild plum and elderberry bushes are all getting their ripened fruit now. I saw birds eating some of the berries and came across an Eastern Fox Squirrel breakfasting on the plums.
Along the river, there was a small flock of Canada Geese feeding (bottoms-up in the shallow water) with a female Common Merganser fishing among them. They eat different things, so the geese were stirring up the water plants and the Merganser would grab any small fish that appeared. Unintentional mutualism. While I was watching them, I saw something else in the water, swimming against the current and realized it was a beaver!
I went down as close to the shore as I could – (It’s hard for me to clamber over the rocks.) – and tried to get some photos of it. Photo-taking was difficult because the beaver stayed close to shore and was obscured by the tules and other riverside plants and scrubby trees. When it got into less cluttered spots, in was in the shade, and my camera had trouble focusing between the dark and the reflections on the water. So, I walked ahead of where I thought the beaver was heading to a sunnier spot and waited for it… and waited for it… and then I heard a splash and realized it had swum under the water right past me and came up in the river behind me. Hah! Sneaky Pete!
I walked for about 4 hours and then headed back home.
Species List:
American Bullfrog, Lithobates catesbeianus,
Bewick’s Wren, Thryomanes bewickii,
Black Harvester Ant, Messor pergandei,
Black Phoebe, Sayornis nigricans,
Blue Oak, Quercus douglasii,
Bush Katydid nymph, Scudderia pistillata,
California Black Walnut, Juglans californica,
California Mugwort, Artemisia douglasiana,
California Poppy, Eschscholzia californica,
California Scrub Jay, Aphelocoma californica,
California Towhee, Melozone crissalis,
California Wild Grape, Vitis californica,
California Wild Plum, Prunus subcordata,
Canada Goose, Branta canadensis,
Chinese Privet, Ligustrum sinense,
Coffeeberry, California Buckthorn, Frangula californica,
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