Now it is Monday September 26th. Yesterday our friends Barry and Jeannie took us to La Jolla and we walked along the clifftop path from Children’s Pool to The Cove. I lived in La Jolla in 1970, and I have been back there to visit very frequently since then.
Yesterday there were no seals or sealions at the Children’s Pool, although usually there are at least 100 of them resting on that beach. But further north a bit, there were many sealions on rocks along the coast, probably those would add up to about 100 or more. Many of them were vocalizing loudly. This is the pupping season.
I was amazed to find out that the California Sealion was a lifer for me! That must mean I have simply not walked that path in La Jolla since 2014! At first I thought maybe I had observed the California harbor seals in La Jolla, and not the California sea lions, but in fact I hadn’t observed either species since I joined iNat!
Back here in Encinitas today I found two new insects. On some near-to-the-hotel Yellow Lantana I found two caterpillars of the Lantana Stick Moth, cool! https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/136633994
There were also a couple of adults of that Stink Bug on the tree, because I saw one fly away while I was there, and a few days later I found a dead adult covered in spider silk.
This fly which I believe to be Sepsis sp., which if true, makes it also a family lifer as well. If it isn’t, I’m pretty confident this is a lifer anyhow.
In The Reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation you can find directions how. My friend has that book and is doing it. All I know is the first steps that we did with ours; keep them cold & moist (not wet / don’t let it mold) - so like a baggie in your fridge - for three months. Then can plant in potting soil, keeping it warm (don’t know which temp range is best), to germinate.
there were a lot more detail but ours are currently in the fridge in their cold-phase. I have a brown thumb so I don’t try such things xD she said it’s like a year process before they can be put outside i just listen to her and do what she says haha
I came back a few days ago from two weeks of birdwatching/iNaturalizing in the state of Veracruz, Mexico - SO many lifers!! But here are a couple that I’m most curious to figure out. The first one is a very well-camouflaged orthopteran - at least, I think it’s an orthopteran. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/136610385
The second one I thought was a big cicada, but iNat says it’s a plant hopper and it doesn’t match any of the cicada species in Mexico, as far as I can tell. It does look something like hoppers in the genus Acraephia, so I called it that. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/136625105
Monday Sept 26th on the same block as the Moonlight Beach Motel in Encinitas, California.
I saw a Nuttall’s Woodpecker come out of a hole in the base of a frond of a palm tree. I thought it was a Downy Woodpecker, but no, it is a West Coast species that is new to me. Very cool to get a bird lifer! That does not happen often.
This weird little syrphid (Dioprosopa clavata?) is not just a fun find, but one thats plagued me for a year now. I briefly saw it last year but was totally unable to get a photo (is it still a lifer then…?) and kind of went nuts trying to find what it was, even submitting hasty sketches to iNat (that, quite reasonably, got mis-IDed as wasps). Never seen a syrphid that took its wasp mimicry quite this far, body-shape wise.
I haven’t gotten a second ID on it yet, but I believe I saw a Gyponana gladia, which I had only recently added to my list of “want-to-sees.” I thought the red and green coloration was very beautiful.
Not only was it’s timing perfect, appearing just two days after I wrote it into my list, but it came flying into my house- I did not need to seek it out.
On Sunday I was in Cádiz and saw turnstones for the first time. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/137503678
Cute little birds. And there was this strange clicking sound which I first couldn’t identify. It was the turnstones turning stones! :-)
It’s a hard week to report, mycoblitz means some fungi observations are getting ided instead of ignored, so many new species for me in that realm, hard to pick a few. So, here’s a short list of species I wanted to see for a long time: Badhamia utricularis, Slimy Spike, False Chanterelle, Beech Jelly-disc, cannonball fungus, Tripe Fungus, Velvet Rollrim, Pipe Club.
Also finally got a dead Deer Fly to photograph, still at least 2 more species out of this family seen, but not observed. Really small curculionid Brachonyx pineti and tentatively ided apple lacebug – saw two of them, but one escaped. Will see what this last day of the week brings, and half a thousand of observations not yet checked by experts.
I was trying to go birding for the eBird big day. Saw very few birds but I did see my very first Great Purple Hairstreak! It was in the swamp and absolutely gorgeous.
The funny thing is that I kept seeing the little tails on the wings moving and I thought the butterfly had been caught by a spider that was now feeding on it and those tails were the legs! Then i realized that they were just lovely little tails…
Probably soon, when you realize how many native species are killed/displaced by it, you’ll have a different reaction - at least that’s how it was for me
