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.