Visit the kelpforest....

In fond memory:

Stimpson J. Cat
? 1996 - May 23, 2012



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Last summer, runsamuck and Gareth built a birdhouse as a kind of father-son woodworking project.



We stuck it up on the Moreton Bay Fig tree in front of our house, just on a whim. I thought it would be purely decorative - it's a rather odd size, and the hole is bigger than ideal. It's also located only about 10' above the sidewalk, with people walking their dogs under it every day.

( Sorry, forgot a cut-tag...but, burdz! )

Hmm. I had no idea turkey vultures were such a big problem, until someone sent a question in to my agency's Q&A, regarding them roosting on his tile roof and damaging it.

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ws/researchreports/report05.pdf

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1743&context=icwdm_usdanwrc

And apparently the best way to deal with them is by hanging up, upside down, what looks like (and sometimes is, although fake ones can be used as well) a dead one. Somewhat similar to all the plastic owls hanging out on roofs and signs to keep away pigeons, I suppose.

I quite often pass large groups of them roosting in trees around the perimeter of the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station near my workplace. Occasionally I've come down the 405 Freeway to see them all spreading out their wings to the morning sun after a cool night.

Met one of the admin staff coming out the door as I was going in and noticed she had a supportive boot on one foot - she told me she'd been wearing high heels, stepped in a sprinkler hole and broken her ankle. Ow. But it went well with her other black sneaker with florescent pink laces.

She also warned me there was a skunk around the building that had already sprayed one person; the maintenance guys had already shooed it around the other side of the building where there aren't any doors, though. That's a brave guy; although she originally used the word "chased," she amended it to "ambled." In other wildlife news, there is a mother mallard raising about eight ducklings in the building's atrium. They paddle around in the fountain and must be eating whatever bugs and things are in among the plantings, which they hide in whenever anyone goes out there; the maintenance staff had been giving them a little extra but one of our biologists got after them about the prohibition on feeding wildlife. Mom can fly in and out, but I wonder if the babies going to be there until they learn to fly, too? I'll have to see if I can get some pictures of them before they leave.

Interesting...I posted a while ago about a pelican on the sidewalk in my neighborhood, and only now stumbled across a February posting from the International Bird Rescue Research Center - they have a center in San Pedro, up the hill from the docks - that might explain some of the weird things pelicans were doing last winter.

California Brown Pelicans in distress: Event update


That's generally how I find things, I forget I was looking for them and then trip over them, months later...

Another Allen's hummingbird, this time confused on how to get out of runsamuck's bike "garage" (the tent-type carport thingie) on the back driveway. There are way more Anna's locally, I only rarely spot Allen's flying around. But they're always the ones getting stuck. We tried rolling up the sides, but he refused to take the hint, so we finally captured him between the broom and long-handled wooly duster and moved him outside - only about three feet away, but "down" is apparently not in the flight vocabulary. He buzzed away in great relief.

Why are they always Allen's?
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
19 June 2009

Edit: 10/10/09 - Yet another one stuck in the patio skylight yesterday! And yes, another Allen's - feisty little guy, he was making a lot of noise.

Mountain Lion Makes its Way to the 405 Freeway

On that trip up to Monterey in January, I believe I mentioned seeing a doe in the same area, very close to the freeway in the Sepulveda Pass, right below the Getty Center, sort of a penninsula into a very urban area. So the cats are staying close to their food source, seems like. I just hope they can avoid the human/cat interactions that have happened here in Orange County where I live.


For other cats, here's a blog entry from a few months ago by a senior volunteer at the Aquarium of the Pacific, who saw a family of bobcats in the nature reserve near UC Irvine (and here's accompanying video).



I'm floored how close these bobcats came to people - usually if they're in the area, you don't know it.

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! )

Angus and I spent most of yesterday planning and getting supplies for a diorama on rattlesnakes (he picked the animal himself) that's due this week. ( Read more... )