Sunday afternoon activity: Sitting here wondering if it will really rain over the next couple of days, as the forecasts have suggested for a few days, or not. So far, we’ve had clouds and some drizzle. While I ponder the relatively unusual prospect of a late June rainfall in the Bay Area, I was looking at weather satellite pictures, and then at loops of satellite pictures made over the last few hours. I started to wonder whether I could find a full day’s worth of those looped images, or maybe a week’s or a month’s. I still haven’t found anything like that. But I did find plenty of versions of the the stock views from NOAA’s GOES West (GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite). No matter how many times I see it, the view of the full disk of the Earth (above, taken this morning; click for a larger image) evokes wonder. Below (click for much larger image) is the West Coast in beautiful enhanced infrared color, complete with the weather systems that could bring us rain.
Last week, I wrote of the tragic disappearance of one of our three small red-eared slider turtles in the beak of a local scrub jay. However, I did wonder if I was justified in blaming the jay. I mean, there was a chance another bird could have grabbed the hapless turtle or that the reptile might have self-levitated and escaped the box we set up .
A couple days after the presumed turtle-napping, we put the turtles back out on the patio again so they could get some sun. This time, we put some light netting over the box to foil any nearby predators. Less than an hour after we put the box the out, I looked out the kitchen window and saw a jay–the same one, I’m pretty sure, that I had seen the day of the turtle disappearance–standing on the edge of the box and trying to peck its way through the netting. (That’s him–why do I think it’s a him?–or her or it up above.)
That settled it for me–that bird is guilty as charged. Also, we need to figure out something more discouraging than some butterfly netting if the turtles are going to get to hang out there.
Two of our backyard turtles (Pickle, left, and Shelby) in happier days. Shelby went missing after visit by local scrub jay.
Earlier this week, I posted what might well be construed as a fond reflection on our local scrub jays. They’re interesting, they’re beautiful, yadda yadda yadda.
Now listen to what the little bastards have done.
A few weeks ago, Kate the Science Teacher brought home three little turtles, red-eared sliders, given to her by a student who was moving away. Turtles–I remember having some as pets when we were kids, how one tragically escaped our house and fell victim to ants.
But these little reptiles (Trachemys scripta elegants) are actually really fun to watch insofar as they are clearly observant and social and react to what’s going on around them. Kate read up a little on their habits and and how to keep them and we instituted some improvements in the condition of their captivity. We gave them names–Pickle, Shelby, and Serena. One of the things Kate discovered was that they like to sun themselves and that basking is an important way for them to get their needed dose of Vitamin D (it helps build strong shells). So we have taken to carrying the turtles’ “tank” (a 7.5-gallon translucent blue plastic filing box) out back to let them soak up some rays.
That’s what I did yesterday morning. I could see from the kitchen that all three turtles, each just a few inches in diameter, had pulled themselves up onto the flagstone at the center of their container.
Then I went away. When I came back, I heard one of the local jays squawking. I looked out back, and saw it fumbling around with something on the back part of our patio. Huh, I thought. Then I went back to whatever I’d been doing. Getting ready to go to my afternoon shift at the Public Radio Station, I went out to bring the turtles back inside. Weird–I could only see two of them. I looked again. Yes, only two.
Then I noticed the cuttlebone (a calcium supplement) from the tank had been pulled out and pecked. Who or what had done that? My conclusion was that it was the scrub jay I’d seen hopping around before, and that that bird or accomplices unknown had managed to spear the missing turtle and make a meal of it.
Conclusion: I am saddened and chagrined to report we’ve got charming predators in our midst, and we’ll need to screen the top of that tank when we put it out back again.
Red-eared slider as rendered by 19th century artist Karl Bodmer.
I think I know every way that blue jays are objectionable birds. They’re raucous. They’re aggressive. They prey on those weaker than themselves, and the young of those weaker than themselves. We had a towhee nest in a trellis on our back porch, and the towhees went about their business and laid their eggs, and in no time a scrub jay, maybe a couple of them, found about about it, and before we could stop nature from happening, the jays were having a scrambled towhee egg brunch.
Still. In the eye of this beholder they are beautiful. The blue plumage, for one thing. And their apparent intelligence. They just look like they’re sizing things up when you watch them. They give the impression that they’re watching you, too. Some California researchers believe our western scrub jays hold a form of funeral (more like a group alarm) when one of their jay buddies flies on to the next life (here’s a BBC story: Birds hold ‘funerals’ for dead; and a video of one of these gatherings).
The last couple of days, I’ve been trying to reclaim the North Forty (a.k.a., the backyard). A scrub jay showed up yesterday as I cleared weeds, and followed along behind me to pick over whatever I uncovered. This afternoon, same routine. This bird appeared entirely unafraid; I can’t decide if it’s a young one who hasn’t learned how untrustworthy the Wingless Two-Leggers are, or an older bird that has figured out that Berkeley is full of Bird Huggers.
Anyway. The bird hung around as long as I was clearing the ground. As soon as I stopped, it moved on, probably to the next easy meal.
The other morning, Kate was headed out for the early-morning walk with The Dog, then came back in to tell me I should come and see a moth on the front porch. I was editing a story and grunted that I was busy. After the walk, she came back and showed me a picture of the creature hanging on the wall near the front door. Yeah, it was striking. So I grabbed my camera to go take a look.
What we didn’t know was what sort of moth it might be. Thanks to the amazing World Wide Web, I found a site that included a species identifier that, after four or five clicks, drilled down to five candidate species. No. 4 on that list was Hyles lineata, or the white-lined sphinx. I don’t recall ever seeing one before, though I readily find a reference to a recent appearance in Alameda, less than 10 miles from here.
According to one of the links above, this species is a fairly benign presence in our environment (especially when compared to the more widely distributed Homo sapiens).
And unless their numbers are excessive, they’re unlikely to pose a significant worry for gardeners or orchardists. “Sometimes they might nibble a little bit along the way, but they will have little effect on those plants,” he says. The caterpillars have fed on a wide range of plants — purslane, portulaca, wild grape, and a host of weeds and various desert shrubs; they tend to stick with low, shrubby plants.
In an uncertain world, there’s one thing you can count on in Berkeley every late winter and spring: Oxalis pes-caprae, also known around town as oxalis, Bermuda buttercup, yellow wood sorrel, “some kind of shamrock,” and sourgrass. “Sourgrass” because the stems are edible and tart, and both our kids, as well as lots of their friends, occasionally picked the grass and ate it when they were little.
On one hand, the plant is not unattractive–the blooms are almost iridescent in the right light–and was once something that gardeners planted ornamentally. I have a neighbor who says he likes to let the plant have its day, seeing how pretty it is for a few weeks every year.
On the other hand, the damned thing’s a nuisance. It’s ubiquitous, showing up in garden beds far and wide. Once it arrives, it’s virtually to get rid of. Pulling it up, you discover it has little white translucent tubers that seem to have something to do with how it spreads. You also occasionally find miniature bulbs from which the plant grows in the fall. Since it’s an alien (it’s native to South Africa) and invasive, it’s more than a headache for gardeners. Here’s what the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management site says about Oxalis pes-caprae:
Bermuda buttercup was first noted in California in the San Francisco Bay region and has since spread throughout most coastal counties, the coastal range, and into the Central Valley. In the last 10 years, this plant has invaded native coastal dunes and natural areas along the coast, leading to the demise of native plants. It is a troublesome weed that is more competitive than is assumed from its general appearance.
Due to its extensive occurrence in yards and gardens, Bermuda buttercup has the potential to rapidly spread via the production of bulbs and the movement of contaminated soils into adjacent natural areas. Because it is practically impossible to eradicate infested soils of this weed, take care to prevent Bermuda buttercup from invading wild lands.
And here’s what the site says you’re in for if you’re really dedicated to the cause of eradicating your personal patch of oxalis:
The best control method for this pernicious weed is prevention. If new infestations are spotted and controlled early, it is possible to eradicate small populations. Large populations are difficult to control and will require multiple years of diligent control efforts.
Small infestations can be controlled by repeated manual removal of the entire plant. Repeated pulling of the tops will deplete the bulb’s carbohydrate reserves, but these efforts will take years to be successful. Repeated mowing also will eventually deplete the bulb. Cut Bermuda buttercup before it flowers and forms new bulbs. Repeated cutting or cultivation is necessary to reduce plant numbers. The soil from which plants are removed should be carefully examined or sifted to remove bulbs and bulblets, an extremely time- and labor-intensive process. Before planting in an infested area, use soil solarization to further reduce Bermuda buttercup populations.
Exotic fauna of Sutter County: a zebroid on the hoof (click for larger images).
We’re in the bittersweet last day or so of our joint spring break (Kate from the demanding world of public education, me from the somewhat less demanding world of public broadcasting). At the beginning of the week, we went on a mini road trip to see a relatively little-visited natural wonder I’d read about in the paper a few weeks ago (Feather Falls–more on that later). We wound up spending a day driving up to one of the state’s big reservoirs, Lake Oroville, a day hiking, then another day winding our way back down to the Bay Area.
There’s a certain part of the Sacramento Valley I’ve gotten to know from riding a bicycle through it–generally the area on the southern half or so of the valley, from the state capital up to about Chico. The most striking visual feature of that part of the state, almost everyone would agree, is the volcanic remnant rising up from the floor of the valley, known now as the Sutter Buttes. Someone sometime in the distant past–probably Ripley’s Believe-It-or-Not, probably in the 1940s–designated the buttes, which rise to a maximum elevation of just over 2,100 feet and cover about 75 square miles, “the smallest mountain range in the world.”
One thing about the buttes: though a piece of the central buttes is now public land, access is across private land and thus only possible by appointment–either on a pre-arranged tour or with researchers (a public-radio colleague, Molly Samuel, got in a while back with some biologists studying an animal I had never heard of before: the ringtail). So what the public gets to do, generally, is drive around the perimeter. Wednesday, that’s what we did, retracing a path I’ve ridden a few times in the past. West of Yuba City, just outside the little town of Sutter, we had our own exotic animal encounter.
Passing a farmyard, Kate called out, “Is that a zebra?” I missed whatever she had seen, but when I looked over, I saw a couple of llamas (more and more common on ranches here) and, very uncommon, a camel. A camel? A zebra? I turned around to take a look.
The “zebra” was pretty clearly a hybrid of some kind–probably a cross between a zebra and a donkey. She, or perhaps he, certainly looked like a donkey and had the docile, inquisitive nature of a donkey, coming right over to the fence to check out Scout (a.k.a The Dog). We checked out some of the other animals on the premises–some odd-looking goats, a pygmy donkey of some sort, the llamas, a few horses, the aforementioned camel, and a pack of furious dogs that seemed to contain at least one labradoodle.
Wikipedia says zebra/equine hybrids–known generally as zebroids–have a long history and even drew Darwin’s attention. The names for the crosses are many, including zonkey, donkra, zedonk, zebonkey, zebronkey, zebrinny, zebrula, zebrass, and zebadonk. I came up with my own term: variegated ass.
I was just visiting one of my favorite news picture sites, The Atlantic’s In Focus blog, and came across this storm image. The caption reads: “This nighttime satellite image of Hurricane Sandy was acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite around 2:42 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, on October 28, 2012. (Suomi NPP, NASA, NOAA).”
I never cease to wonder at the beauty of these images captured from space, even when they’re images of a phenomenon that we experience as unimaginable power and violence when it comes ashore.
A black-crowned night heron, one of several we see hanging around the ferry dock at Jack London Square in Oakland. We usually spot two hanging out on the rocks right at the water line south/east of the dock. They are in the midst of some pretty heavy human traffic, but they are still skittish when they detect you getting close. Over the past half-year or so, a great blue heron has been frequenting the same area. Last night it was roosting on the dock next to the USS Potomac, FDR’s presidential yacht.
Our friends Jill and Piero have a place about 5,000 feet up in the Sierra, in Calaveras County. The western yellow jacket, known taxonomically as Vespula pensylvanica and popularly as the Sierra meat bee, is their constant companion during the summer. The prevalence of these wasps has given rise to a variety of home-made solutions to keep them at bay (including some very low-tech ones). To deal with his crop, Piero has bought some traps that use some kind of chemical attractant. The wasps find their way in but can’t find their way out, and they die. When we were up there over Labor Day weekend, the traps had just been emptied into a white five-gallon bucket; there were enough of them that they covered the bottom of the bucket maybe an inch deep. That’s a lot of insects.
