Visit the kelpforest....

By way of Dirt du Jour - In Star Trek: Wrath of Khan I think they must have based the Genesis Cave on on this place. If they even knew of its existence then...

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/largest-cave/peter-photography

Gorgeous photos! It seems like most of the caves that get coverage lately are the kind people get stuck in, or do dangerous cave diving in, or are filled with awesome giant crystals but are 130° F in, which I prefer to watch other people do, thank you.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEeeee!

Just watched Wesley hatch about five minutes ago at http://www.ustream.tv/theowlbox. It was so funny, Molly was sitting there almost falling asleep, and suddenly she jumped straight up and turned around; then you could see the egg was cracked in half. She helped the newest out of the shell. Congrats on your fourth Molly and McGee! Max, Pattison and Austin are going to start getting cramped; Molly has to check where she's putting her feet.

Max is a week old today, and it must be warm enough that Molly is letting him sit next to her instead of under.

I posted this on Facebook a couple of days ago, but thought I'd let my LJ friends know too -

http://www.ustream.tv/theowlbox

Sent by my bird lover boss to us at work. Molly is a soon-to-be-mother barn owl whose eggs are about to hatch, in San Marcos CA. She's asleep right now, but earlier she was eating breakfast that her mate McGee brought her. My kids are watching this every chance they get. Apparently the eggs can be heard peeping, so sounds like it's going to be soon - although I have a hard time telling from all the other bird songs. I hear roosters right now.

We seem to have a new neighbor! I have lived in this neighborhood in Orange County since I was a small child (going on 40 yrs), and I have never seen tree squirrels here, a mile from the beach. Ground squirrels occasionally, but not tree squirrels. I've seen this one on my street, and I saw a group of three of them a few blocks away. This one does not have the typical fluffy tail, but he holds it like a tree squirrel, and he's got the right coloring.

My brother lives in West Hollywood, and I will sometimes see them scampering down the power lines when I'm visiting, but he isn't too far away from the Hollywood Hills, which probably serve as a wildlife corridor. This is a suburban area probably a good twenty miles from the nearest place I've seen a tree squirrel. Someone suggested the fires last fall in the Cleveland National Forest might have driven them into the city, but much of what was burned was charparal, not trees.

Tree squirrel
Huntington Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
16 April 2008

Crossposted to urban_nature

Edit: Definitely fox squirrels - The Southern CA Fox Squirrel Page (someone's master's thesis, apparently) says -

Fox squirrels (Sciurus niger) were introduced to the Los Angeles area in about 1904. Civil war and Spanish American war veterans residing at the Sawtelle Veteran’s Home on Sepulveda and Wilshire Boulevards brought fox squirrels to this site from their homes in the areas surrounding the Mississippi Valley (possibly Tennessee). Other introductions of fox squirrels to the Los Angeles area may have taken place during more recent times but detailed records are not available.

( ...and grunion greeting! )

(crossposted to urban_nature)

We saw tons of mourningcloak (Nymphalis antiopa) caterpillars this summer. I haven't seen this many for years. When I was a kid, they used to colonize the few elm trees on my street, but the city began spraying the trees for pests, and they became a lot rarer. Lots of people don't like the caterpillars because they are spiky and scary looking, and leave lots of droppings beneath whatever tree they are feeding on. This website has some nice background infomation on them, and it's even from my county! :)

http://www.dbc.uci.edu/~pjbryant/biodiv/lepidopt/nymph/mcloak.htm

We noticed this small tree in June. I'm not sure; I think its a type of Australian willow. I walk past it from the bus stop to my house. There were so many caterpillars, they completely stripped it of leaves three times over the summer. I never noticed so many on any other tree on my street, even though there are others of the same type only a few houses away. The third time caterpillars appeared on the tree, they got about half grown and then one day I came home from work to find that the property owners had ripped the entire tree out of the ground.



( more stages... )

I got a suprise leaving the office yesterday evening( Read more... )

The ants are committing suicide in the freezer again