Around 5:30 this morning, I headed out to the American River Bend Park for a walk. It was in the high 60’s when I got there and heated up quickly; around 71° when I left.
I didn’t have an agenda in mind and was just watching for whatever Nature wanted to show me. I ended up finding a few galls on the oak trees, including one I’d never seen before. I’d seen photos of them but had never seen one “live”. It was a Two-Horned Gall of the wasp Dryocosmus dubiosus. Coolness. They’re found on the underside of the leaves of Live Oak trees, usually along the median vein. Also found the big Oak Apple galls, tiny Pumpkin Galls, and some Goldenrod galls.
In the water fountain near the restroom, I found a large beetle lying on its back. It was about an inch long and really kind of “hairy”. It had lost one of its antennae and was dying, but I still took some photos of it. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was, so when I got home, I Googled “beetle with hairy chest” – Hah! – and the correct identification actually came right up. It was, of course, a “June Bug” or more correctly a May Beetle, Phyllophaga sp. Around that same area, I found the shed skin of a snake, including its face.
June Bug, May Beetle, Phyllophaga sp.,
I could hear Red-Shouldered Hawks yelling at each other across the forest while I was out there, and at one point a fledgling flew down out of a tree onto the ground beside the trail. I couldn’t tell if he actually caught anything or if he was just practicing, but he sat for a moment and looked over his shoulder at me so I could snap a photo before he flew off again.
Just as I was leaving, I came across the nesting cavity of some Tree Swallows. I watched them take turn flying in and out of the cavity a few times and got some photos before heading back to the house.
I headed out to the Effie Yeaw Nature Preserve. It was about 56° when I got there, but it was up to around 75° when I left. When I got there, I was happy to see my friend and fellow-naturalist Roxanne there, too. She’s helping me out with the Monarch monitoring facet of my volunteer work at the preserve. I really appreciate her help, too, because it makes the somewhat tedious process of looking over each milkweed plant go more quickly.
Still no sign of Monarch eggs or caterpillars, and what was odd was we didn’t see much in the way of other insects either. We did find some spiders (including a White Crab Spider and a little Jumping Spider), some aphids, a single praying mantis, and a couple of beetles but that was it. The lack of critters was rather surprising and made me wonder if the area had been sprayed or something. We worked on the plants for about 90 minutes and then went for a short walk through the preserve.
Although we heard a lot of different birds, we didn’t see any Wild Turkeys today, which was very unusual. They’re normally all over the place. We came across two bucks but no does and no fawns. Both bucks were in their velvet. One was a nervous youngster who was just getting his first antlers (a “spike buck”), and the other was a laid-back 3-pointer who was just lying in the grass on the side of the trail. He kept an eye on us but didn’t move from his spot. I guess he figured we were no match for him, so we weren’t much of a threat. He was gorgeous. And because he was so still, we were able to get quite a few good photos of him.
The most exciting thing to me that we came across on our walk was sighting a few different species on a Blue Oak tree (Quercus douglasii) along the River Trail. It had both Saucer Galls (Andricus gigas) and newly budding Crystalline Galls (Andricus crystallinus). The saucers start out flat and then form cups (some with smooth edges and some with serrated edges). The Crystalline Galls start out like tiny dark-pink urns and then swell up and get their sparkly spines. We hadn’t seen any galls at all on the “Frankenstein” hybrid tree further up the trail, so finding the galls on the Blue Oak by the river was rewarding.
It was nice to see that this particular
Blue Oak was also getting acorns on it. These oaks don’t produce acorns in drought
years, and when they do produce acorns, they’ll produce a lot one year (a “mast”
year) and then produce far fewer for the next two or three years. So, as I said, it was nice to see this one
with acorns all over it. (The acorns
usually take a year to develop.) Blue Oaks are also endemic to California,
which means they’re found here and nowhere else on the planet. It’s also one of the oak trees that is immune
to the fungus that causes Sudden Oak Death.
Very cool trees.
Oh, and we found a Treehopper – but it jumped away before I could get a photo of it. Those things are sooooooo weird-looking with their hunched backs. The one we saw was a Buffalo Treehopper (Stictocephala bisonia): mostly green with some burnished gold edges on it.
We walked the trails for about 2 hours.
Species List:
Blue Oak, Quercus douglasii,
Brass Buttons, Cotula coronopifolia,
Buffalo Treehopper, Stictocephala bisonia,
California Mugwort, Artemisia douglasiana,
California Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly, Battus philenor hirsuta,
California Praying Mantis, Stagmomantis californica,
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,
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