Toyon, Robins, & Waxwings

It's a Robin Invasion!
On every branch of every tree, a robin.  Roadside and field are crawling with the buggers.  The least puddle finds a robin bathing.  Aimless flocks crisscross the sky, looking down on millions of other robins below.  The sound of robins drowns out all other bird song.

This happens three or four times a year -- robins suddenly sweeping in and dominating the landscape -- but this is unprecedented.

Worms are their preferred fare, but they also dine on toyon berries.  The bushes shimmer and shake when they're infested by the birds.

Yesterday I stepped from the car and a toyon was a riot of robins.  Yet something was amiss...  there were lookalikes mixed in!

Embiggened this photo to spot 4 robins and 4 fellow-travelling imposters.

A couple of the bandits...

Which explains much:
* the "subtle coloring"  Mary & I remarked on distant robins...
* the strange bird we'd seen from the rear on the sidewalk...

Now that my eyes are open, Cedar Waxwings are everywhere.

Oak-Loving Fungi

After the first rains of November,  outlandish growths suddenly appeared on this old oak.

Tentative identification: Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus gilbertsonii)

I pass this tree every day and the yellow fungus sprouted overnight.

After several weeks it browned and withered.

==============================================

Fast forward to late December, at the base of the same tree...

Tentative identification: some kind of Chanterelle

Chanterelle favors soil around (or in the nooks and crannies of) oak.

People actually collect and sell this beauty.

Red-Breasted Sapsucker

A new bird, a Christmas gift.

Across the field, high in a tree, a dim silhouette at dusk with a unrecognized call: "Cheer"

Forget the binoculars!
A pocket digital camera with mega-zoom is a birder's best friend.

If I'd had presence of mind, I would have switched to video and captured its song.

December Clouds

Killdeer

Western Meadowlark

Certain birds pass through in the Spring and then again in the Fall.

Coyote Bush

A non-descript shrub I despaired of identifying: unruly, evergreen, common.

Finally, beginning in late September, it began "blooming", tight white hairy tufts.

Small mystery solved.

Acorns

Mid-November, the birds (and squirrels) are stocking their larder with acorns.


This Scrub Jay is about to bury his acorn in the ground.

The Acorn Woodpecker uses and reuses holes pecked into trees and poles.

Come December this is what all the telephone poles will look like.

There are thieves. Squirrels pry the nuts from telephone poles, and flickers uncover acorns which they did not bury.

Question: what kind of acorns do the different animals favor?  Live, Blue, Black, Valley?

A magic sight the other day: a towering Valley Oak and scores of peckers and jays streaming into the dense boughs and leaving with an acorn.  It was a river of birds both ways.  Then the obvious dawned on me -- they pluck the acorns straight from the branches, and not off the ground.  Duh.

Cooper's Hawk

From the bedroom window.

Once I saw a Cooper's skulking near the birdfeeder.  He dove into a nearby tree, flushed a goldfinch, and chased it like a rollercoaster through the limbs and branches.

Cooper's resemble Sharp-shinned, but have longer neck and rounded, white-tipped tail.
Both have blood-red eyes!

American Kestrel

Kestrels were in this same field last Spring. I noticed their return a few weeks ago.

There's an open barn where small birds nest, a field full of insects, and a telephone pole that makes an ideal perch.

Kestrels are the smallest falcon.  They feed on insects and sparrows.

Very handsome.

Pacific Gopher Snake

Struck by a car.  About 18" long.

California Harvester Ant

A typical harvester nest.  This photograph was taken in July.

The entrance is a rude crack in the ground surrounded by a halo of trash: shells & husks mainly, some tiny pebbles brought up from below, and an occasional insect corpse.

When they arrive, ants take their seed straight down the hole (presumable to storage chambers).  Sometime later detritus is brought back up.  In between, what happens? 

The trash seems to reflect what's currently in seed within 100 feet of the nest.  If that's the case, their harvest doesn't stay in storage long.  They do make mistakes and gather the inedible.


Below is the same nest yesterday (~2 months later).

The mix has largely changed.

The white parachute seeds appeared only yesterday.  I'll look around a see where they come from.

One curiosity is that harvesters feed on a single plant at a time; they don't scatter helter-skelter, but travel bee-line from the nest.

Here's a path running due left from the hole.  Up close it looks like they'd worn a gutter in the ground with a billion little footsteps.

Below groundlevel, it looks so:  an actual mold of a harvester nest.

The scientist poured molten copper down the hole of Florida harvesters in order to capture the architecture.

Narrow-Leaved Milkweed

Now at the end of September...

...the seedpods are bursting open.

For comparison, the same plant one month ago...

...in flower, even as some pods were forming.

It began like this: back at the end of July, flowers were first opening...

...no idea what the outlandish orange mites were about.

Tobacco Hornworm

Something caught my eye.

The plant is called "Indian Tobacco"; it's in the same genus, Nicotiana, as regular smoking tobacco.

The caterpillar becomes a very large (5" wingspan) moth called Carolina Sphinx that flies at dawn and dusk and feeds on the flowers of the same family of plants, the Nightshade.  And that's also where it lays its eggs.

If the caterpillar survives predators it will pupate underground for the winter, emerge in the Spring, and the cycle begins again.

The caterpillar's head is at the bottom of the photo.

Great Egret

The seasonal pond is no more than a puddle, but he tried to fish...

...until I disturbed him. Some species of birds do not like to be watched by humans, even from a safe distance.

Note the green line under the eye. And massive beak.

Acorn Woodpecker, Displaying

As the weather cools, Acorn Woodpeckers seem to confuse the season with Spring.

The photo is blurry, but the spiny fin-like tail is apparent.

Gray Hairstreak

Feeding on doveweed and horehound...

... one wing has been nibbled, letting us glimpse the opposite wing's topside marking.

The trailing "spurs" are decoy antennae.  Looks like it worked for this guy.

Another day, another Hairstreak, now upside down.
Look how elaborately it says "My butt is my head!"

The Crystal Range

While drinking coffee with a friend, sitting on a deck, mountains in the distance... I realize I don't know what I'm looking at.  It's a snowy ribbon on the horizon... it's where you drive to go skiing... it's "the mountains"...

I take a picture and resolved to study it, to identify the features, and answer questions that have nagged me.

Here's a zoom of "the mountains" -- 3/4 of the year they are bright white, snow-covered.

I've always wanted to know:

• I see these peaks every day - what are their names?
• Where is Tahoe in relation to the jagged line?
• Does the road to Tahoe cut through one of these gaps or notches?
• Is this the ridge line of the Sierra, or are there higher peaks beyond these?
• How far away is it?

A first look at Google Satellite Map:

I took the photograph from the left end of the red line, and know  "the mountains" are roughly East North East.  So, the light gray area is probably what I'm looking at.  It is a vast area of exposed granite.

That makes sense: in late summer, when the snow melts, the far mountains do not become green - they are a powdery gray.

Google's Terrain Map settled several questions.

• The silhouette is the crest of the Sierra Nevada; there are no higher peaks behind.
• This section is known as the "Crystal Range"
• It is about 45 miles away, as the crow flies.

But even when I magnify the topographic map, I can't be sure which peak is which.

I want to see the same profile of the mountain against the sky, to be certain of the mountains, and to get names for the peaks.

I download Google Earth and fly from my location towards the Crystal Range, hoping to see the exact silhouette that's on the photograph.

Close enough.
Actually, one flyby was a perfect match but I'm having trouble precisely recreating it.

Result:

After living here 10 years, I finally know that I'm looking at the Crystal Range.

The bleak bleached granite area is the Desolation Wilderness.  And the prominent peaks have names.

The road to Tahoe bypasses the highest mountains and crosses the crest to the south.

Tahoe Basin is right behind the north part of the range.