Cold snap, and two new opuntias

Opuntia sulphurea, on a roll.

With temps below 30F for a few nights, many of the new and/or not-so-hardy plants were crammed under the patio roof...

and covered with frost cloth each evening. Old nursery pots came in handy as covers, too (see far right).

The sun room (odd name, since its windows face north and east) is filled with tender plants, and the garage holds a few more.

Nighttime temperatures for the next ten days or so are expected to be in the 40s F. No rain expected until late next week.

I brought two new opuntia species home from the Mexican Hat nursery. The first is Opuntia sulphurea, shown in the top photo. It's native to Argentina and Bolivia, and has stout pads with long, twisted spines. It's not supposed to be frost hardy, but a Gates C&SS friend who lives a few blocks from me has a big potted O. sulphurea that shrugs at our occasional mid 20F temps and snow. (If it grows in the "high Andes Mountains" one would imagine it to be at least frost tolerant, but several sites rate its hardiness only to zone 9b [25F].) After I bought the plant you see in these photos, the good folks at the nursery tossed in another sulphurea for free — thanks, Mexican Hat! Those twisty spines:

Wiggly: Opuntia sulphurea.

A few links:

Opuntia sulphurea at CactiGuide.
First page of an article from the C&SS Journal on O. sulphurea (October 2013).
Photo of a beautiful plant at the Huntington, via Dave's Garden.

My other new opuntia also has amazing spines, but in this case they are long and straight as knitting needles. The parent plant was growing in the ground at the Mexican Hat nursery, and a kind helper sliced off these paddles for me:

Opuntia quimilo, drying out in the garage with some cholla sections. Weird blue tint on spines produced magically by garage window.

The quimil is another native of South America. Cold hardy to zone 8, maybe. Spines are reported to reach from 8 to 16 inches in length. (Longest spines in the photo above are >4 inches.)

Lots of cool information about the quimil in this post (in Spanish). To wit:

O. quimilo is said to be a favorite hideout of black widow spiders.

The paddles are used as a folk-medicine treatment for venomous snakebites. (Paddles are also used to make a poultice for healing wounds.) It'd be kind of depressing if a black widow bit you while you were trying to break off a paddle to treat your venomous snakebite.

The quimil is a staple of this creature's diet. The pecarí quimilero was apparently known to science only through fossils, and was thought extinct until it was "rediscovered" in the 1970s. From the Wiki link: "It uses its tough snout to roll the cacti on the ground, rubbing the spines off. It may pull off the spines with its teeth and spit them out. The kidneys are specialized to break down acids from the cacti."

Are there any popular North American songs that employ cactus as metaphor? Here's a good one from Argentina. Free translation:

I'd like to be a quimil
rough and stiff-spined
so that no one would shake me
looking for ripe fruit.

It was 38F when I took the dogs out this morning. Spring can come anytime, if you ask me. Thanks to blogger and plantswoman CHACO from Argentina, whose post provided such a wealth of information on the quimil. How intertwined are the lives of plants and people...

"I don't think it woke up"

teeny tiny northern pacific rattlesnake sitting on a leaf pic.twitter.com/Lb2iyzzKtH

— Bryan D. Hughes (@rattlesnakeguy) November 5, 2015

Great photography by Bryan Hughes: click (and then click again) to embiggen.

Merlin Tuttle and The Secret Lives of Bats

  Breathtaking. "Bright colors of painted bats blend well with dead leaves where they roost. Vespertilionidae, S and SE Asia." All photos by Merlin Tuttle.

¡Feliz Día de los Fieles Difuntos! Rather than whine about last week's Santa Anas (worst ever, say people who grew up here in the foothills) or the ongoing clean-up (Sisyphean) or express endless and well-deserved appreciation to the local cactus club members who rehomed some of my plants on Sunday afternoon (room for more opuntias and agaves, yay!), I want to talk for a minute about bats, and about Merlin Tuttle.

Dr. Tuttle is the founder and president emeritus of Bat Conservation International. Because of his work on behalf of bat conservation around the world, bats (and plants, and humans) live much, much better lives. That mosquito carrying the dose of West Nile Virus that had your name on it? A bat ate her. (Bats eat thousand of metric tons of insects in the US each year.) Those avocados (cashews, coconuts, bananas, etc.) you can't imagine living without? Bats pollinate them. Saguaros, glories of the wild and of many gardens, wouldn't exist without bats. The saguaro opens its flowers at night for them:

"A lesser long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris yerbabuenae) pollinating saguaro cactus in Mexico." 

And bats also pollinate agaves. Raise a glass of your favorite reposado to the bat!

"Lesser long-nosed bats (Leptonycteris yerbabuene) pollinating agave (source of tequila) in Arizona." 

And raise another glass to Merlin Tuttle. "Mr. Tuttle is fueled by a ferocious curiosity fed by a stiff dose of crazy," writes Julie Zickefoose in the Wall Street Journal review of his latest book. It's the best kind of crazy: he's determined to learn more, discover more, protect more, educate more, and his adventures along the way make Indiana Jones look like Barney Fife. Saving bats, it seems to me, is a way of saving the world, and I'm so happy that The Secret Lives of Bats is getting lots of attention. Check out the New Yorker review, and the Mother Jones review, then run to Amazon and get a copy.

***

(There's an old documentary floating around called The Secret World of Bats that features Merlin Tuttle and his work for Bat Conservation International. I've shown it to students every October for over twenty years. I realized with kind of a pang that last week's showing will probably be the final one. Not that I'd forego retirement just to keep playing this ancient video for people, but still. Bats are awesome, and Merlin Tuttle is awesome. I can't wait to read his new book.)

Lake Fire

Flammulated Owl, by Marissa on Flickr.

Four years ago at about this time (almost midnight) I was driving back to Big Bear Lake after a night spent owling near Fish Creek, in the San Gorgonio Wilderness area of the San Bernardino National Forest. My fellow birders and I were hoping to see (or hear, more likely) a Flammulated Owl. That's a grown one in the photo above. So small! After prowling the forest roads for a while, we finally heard our owl calling in the old-growth conifers at Mission Springs. It was pitch dark — a wonderful night.

This owling trip has been on my mind the last couple days, because the whole area — the meadow I photographed on the drive in; the forest we traveled through; Aspen Grove trailhead (Violet-green Swallows, Dusky Flycatcher, Green-tailed Towhee...); Fish Creek (Western Tanager, White-headed Woodpecker, Mountain Chickadees, Common Poorwill...); Mission Springs, where we finally heard the little Flamm — all of it is on fire, burned, burning, gone up in smoke, gone up in flames. The Lake Fire ("Incident Description: Moderate Rate Of Spread With Active Torching And Crown Fire Runs") was 16,000 acres in size at last count, and just 15% contained. 

I have a cabin in the San Bernardino National Forest, and fires like this scare the crap out of me. I hope firefighters will stay safe. I hope cabins don't burn. My heart aches for the nestlings too young to fly, the mule deer fawns, the bear cubs. There is no good time for a forest fire, but a big fire at this time of year seems especially cruel. I hope as many of the forest dwellers as possible make it through safely.  

Wildhorse Creek and Wildhorse Meadows to the north, Hell For Sure Canyon to the south. We are not in New England. Aspen Grove, Fish Creek, and Mission Springs, where we heard the little owl, have all burned. Here's the InciWeb link again, and #LakeFire on Twitter.

Random: weather, garden, Gates sale

In the garden: Agave potatorum verschaffeltii with Lotus hybrid Parrot's Beak.

Unusual weather for May: foggy, cool, black skies this afternoon and misting a bit. More rain expected later this week! I'll take it. Down to the low 50s F this evening, humidity 92%. El Niño on the horizon? Maybe. I'm holding good thoughts — though for the most part my thoughts these days are caught up in the usual May/June maelstrom of students, school activities, finals, and other year-end concerns, oy.

Some photos:

More rain! The Gates Cactus & Succulent Society Annual Show and Sale was May 15-16 . It rained the first day. I drove over after work and spent a quick hour plant shopping. For super coverage of the show on Saturday, see Reuben's post over at Rancho Reubidoux.)

Agave horrida at the sale.

These were just a few of many tables, and many shoppers, at the sale. In the white tent, judges were making their final decisions...

Love these little guys. Someday, maybe...

My haul. A new type of Agave titanota, there in the middle. And at lower left in the small box, my find o' the day: Agave x arizonica, a beautiful hybrid between A. chrysantha × A. toumeyana v. bella.

Senecio radicans near and far.

Filling up. The pot in the background holds [you'll have to trust me on this] a new Rosa banksiae 'Lutea.'

Parrot's Beak.

Opuntia azurea.

Why I teach, reason the infinity. Reptile Whisperer C rescued this lovely alligator lizard from the Boys PE locker room — we turned her loose in the orange grove next door. I'm the bring-to person for lizards, snakes, spiders, frog skeletons, photos of dead birds... all the interesting stuff :~)

Flickr Friday: East Bay Wilds Native Plant Nursery

Photo by pete veilleux on Flickr.

This beautiful garden is so not mine. I love native plants and do try to use California natives in the yard, though, agave and succulent love notwithstanding. I have a little native oak; ceanothus; yucca and opuntias native to the foothills where I live; salvias, sage, a toyon... (Doesn't hurt that the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden is just 45 minutes away.)  This article does an excellent job of describing just how important natives are: 

Landscape ecologists estimate that only 3 to 5 percent of the lower 48 states is undisturbed habitat for plants and animals. Farmland now covers more than half of the country. Most of the rest is taken up by suburban sprawl and about 40 million acres of lawns (“eight New Jerseys,” as Mr. Tallamy put it), along with highways, malls and growing cities. A world with half those lawns, he said, might have 20 million acres of habitat, or more than 13 national parks, including Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Adirondacks, if you added up the acreage.

Instead, thanks to vanishing habitats, Mr. Tallamy said, “We have 50 percent fewer birds than 40 years ago,” referring to results of yearly bird-banding studies that track those numbers. And some 230 species of North American birds are at risk of extinction, he added, citing the 2014 State of the Birds Report.

“But we can do something about this,” he said. “We can bring nature back to our yards.”

Amen, brother. And it's an easy call when native plants are this beautiful.

The Despot loses a sale

At the orange big box on January 16: 'Ascot Rainbow,' a tempting spurge. See the little tag tucked in each pot?

Little tag's there on the left.

I have a spurge (Euphorbia characias ‘Glacier Blue’) that I like a lot, and I was tempted to buy 'Ascot Rainbow.' It's beautiful. I took some photos and drove home to think it over, the way one does, and decided to get one. Went back to the store a week or so later, and saw more of those little tags everywhere, on every succulent from big agaves to tiny mammillarias, on plants inside and outside, everywhere. So many of them I took a closer look, and they're not the usual ID/planting info tags.

The tag says something like, "This plant is free of aphids, mealy bugs, etc., etc. because it has been treated with a neonicotinoid pesticide."

Neonicotinoids... where have I heard that word before? Oh. Oh, yeah. "Pesticide blamed in death of 25,000 bumblebees in Oregon." That pesticide. From the Xerces Society:

• Neonicotinoid residues are found in pollen and nectar consumed by pollinators such as bees and butterflies. The residues can reach lethal concentrations in some situations.

• Neonicotinoids can persist in soil for months or years after a single application. Measurable amounts of residues were found in woody plants up to six years after application.

• Untreated plants may absorb chemical residues left over in the soil from the previous year.

• Products approved for homeowners to use in gardens, lawns, and on ornamental trees have manufacturer-recommended application rates up to 120 times higher than rates approved for agricultural crops. [Source]

Boy, I'd sure like some of that in my garden! But seriously, here I am trying to create a wildlife-friendly environment, trying to attract birds, butterflies, bees, lizards, frogs, trying to avoid this type of pesticide use, only to discover that every plant sold by the local Despot is a neonicotinoid time bomb of lethal residues. Great.

To be fair, at least the orange big box requires labeling now: U.S. retailers look to limit pesticides to help honeybees, said Reuters back in June when instead of paying attention, I was up in Big Bear singing "School's out for summer!" (Wonder if the blue big box requires labeling. Must ask.) Anyhow, on Monday I found a droopy, Dr. Seuss-ian  'Ascot Rainbow' at a local nursery that's more organic than not, and put him in a planter for now with a tiny Ceanothus 'Concha.' I hope he thrives.

Be a friend to all nature, little dude!

Western links for Friday

Walt Longmire, er... Warden Karnow on a nice bay BLM mustang.

They're called wildlife officers now, not game wardens, but that doesn't change the fact that the work they do is incredibly important, and more challenging every time you look. Read more about California's wildlife officers here, and follow the links to order this year's California Warden Stamp. A bear on this year's stamp, yay! (Last year's crawdad lobster crustacean was just odd.) There's a warden stamp link in the right sidebar, always.

And speaking of Walt Longmire, sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming, here is a most excellent blog by someone who actually lives in Wyoming: Red Dirt in My Soul.  Great photos, clever crafts, ranch life, and the latest goings-on at the Ten Sleep Public Library. My favorite Wyoming sheriff has been known to make an occasional appearance.

Meet the two guys winter through-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (with nineteen incredible photos). So beautiful! So cold! I'm sure I totally could do this if I had the right equipment. That's all you need — the right equipment. Yep.

Up at the Monterey Bay Aquarium the docents have a section of sea otter pelt for visitors to touch, and it is the softest, thickest, most beautiful fur ever. More here:

For those of you who enjoy a nice day hike: Robert Martinez is a camera trapper who documents the bears, mountain lions and other wildlife in the SoCal foothills. A stone's throw from downtown L.A., people! Check out his blog Parliament of Owls. You can't see them, but they can see you...

The fossil of a Wyoming alligator inspires a fascinating post by Brian Switek. Taphonomy: my new word of the day.

Curious orcas give boaters in dinghy the thrill of a lifetime. Ay caramba, that tiny boat...! “It was an experience I’ll never forget,” said Eric Martin, co-director of the Roundhouse Marine Studies Lab and Aquarium in Manhattan Beach. "And to be honest, I didn’t realize how small we looked” until he saw an image captured by researcher Alisa Schulman-Janiger. Be sure to watch the great videos.

Historic, daring climb on Yosemite’s El Capitan draws a crowd. In the photo gallery, gotta love the spectating couple ignoring the coyote.

And finally, if you live in the west and care about water, you should check out Maven's Notebook. Maven is Chris Austin, who created and published the Aquafornia blog for five years and who knows more about California water issues than pretty much anyone alive. She covers water news like a boss. Follow her for the most thorough, independent, straight dope on western water issues the web can offer.

That's it for today's linkage. Happy trails!

Historic, in its own little way

On Friday afternoon, May 18, 2012, I spotted a big fox squirrel in my oak tree here in Pleasantville. First sighting of this species ever. A few more photos here.

These not-so-little guys were first brought to Los Angeles in the early 1900s, possibly from Tennessee, and they've extended their geographic range, as the biologists say. A 2004 study found them as far east as Claremont — you can read more about the study here. The next fox squirrel census is scheduled for 2014, and I am so ready. They better not trouble my dear western grays, is all I can say.

Chez Robin

As Crush says, "Little dudes are just eggs, leave 'em on the beach to hatch, then coo-coo-ca-choo, they find their way back to the big 'ol blue."

Via the most excellent Fawnskin Flyer.

I never see nuthin'

Aside from dozens of busy, vocal Pygmy Nuthatches and a sky full of Violet-green Swallows sailing in and out of their nests, there weren't many birds along the trail a few of us hiked Sunday morning.

[W]hen you go into the woods, even on the dullest of days, you never see nothing. [T-FB]

Not many birds — but a whole lot of other things to see. Exhibit A: thousands of ladybugs milling around their hibernating place under the pine needles. I snapped a picture of a handful of them, and got some Sticky Cinquefoil [Potentilla glandulosa, a member of the rose family] in the photo as well. Is Sticky Cinquefoil really sticky? Glad you asked: "It is usually coated in hairs, many of which are glandular, giving the plant a sticky texture." [Source.] Yes. Click the photo to embiggen.

This particular ladybug is Hippodamia convergens, correctly known as the Convergent Lady Beetle, thank you very much. "In the western United States, adult convergent lady beetles typically spend up to nine months, from May to February, hibernating in large aggregations in mountain valleys," sez Cornell. Check out these terrific photos at Cornell's Lost Ladybug Project. The Lost Ladybug Project is quite wonderful, and looks a bit like an eBird for ladybugs. From the home page:

Across North America ladybug species distribution is changing. Over the past twenty years several native ladybugs that were once very common have become extremely rare. During this same time ladybugs from other places have greatly increased both their numbers and range. Some ladybugs are simply found in new places. This is happening very quickly and we don’t know how, or why, or what impact it will have on ladybug diversity or the role that ladybugs play in keeping plant-feeding insect populations low. We're asking you to join us in finding out where all the ladybugs have gone so we can try to prevent more native species from becoming so rare.

If I'd known about the Project beforehand, I'd have taken better photos and sent them in. Next time...

Also check out this, from Cornell's site on biological control:

Commercial insectaries distribute beetles that have been "harvested" from natural winter aggregation sites. If lady beetles are collected in this dormant state and transported for field release, even among aphid infestations, they usually migrate before feeding and laying eggs. This migratory behavior before feeding is obligatory. Releases of such "harvested" convergent lady beetles could be a waste of time, money, and beetles. Insectaries may feed the adult beetles a special diet after they have been collected to minimize their migratory behavior. Only such preconditioned beetles should be purchased. Additionally, these harvested beetles may be parasitized.

More here. Food for thought before purchasing that bag o' beetles for your organic garden.

The trail to Sugarloaf Mountain, unlike the ladybug hike, was crazy with birds. More on that trip [with ossum photos by Pam Kling] soon.

[The title of this post was swiped liberated from this great entry over at Two-Fisted Birdwatcher.]

Monsoon season

Every summer here in the San Bernardino National Forest we have stretches where the humidity rises along with the heat and there are thunderstorms in the afternoon: monsoon season. This is the beginning of such a stretch. It was steaming hot yesterday with no breeze at all, then cooled down late, after midnight, the night so still I could hear the flying squirrels as they navigated the trees outside. Right now the sky is slate gray and getting darker and the sun is behind the clouds for good. We're making ourselves comfortable inside. [That's my boy Smoke in the photo above.]

There used to be a giant white fir about twenty feet from our cabin, and a few years ago lightning hit that tree and hit it hard, all the way to the ground. Big parts of the tree — branches and trunk — were scattered over two acres. One jagged, javelin-shaped piece of wood about six feet long came through the cabin roof from the east, which was crazy because the tree was west of the cabin. What with all the other big trees nearby — it's the forest! — I tend to await thunderstorms with a certain amount of suppressed feeling, as T.H. White wrote once. The collies are edgy. Cur-dog Smoke is indifferent.

Some linkage:

Many falconers and birders, and falconers who are birders, know of the legendary falconer and ornithologist Frances Hamerstrom. [She used poison ivy to hide her adventure stuff when she was a kid. I love her.] On the right is a photo of Fran with eagle celeb Ithaca and James Grier with Ithaca's parents.  [More on Ithaca, and more photos, at Fran's granddaughter's blog.]

This isn't news, exactly — Frances Hamerstrom died in 1998, and Ithaca lost his battle with West Nile in 2009 — but a line from Wiki caught my attention: "Frances Hamerstrom was also known as a cook, publishing a wild game cookbook near the end of her life. Her secret for pie crusts was the use of bear lard, and her readers occasionally sent her bear lard as a by-product of their own hunting experiences."

Which made me think of Hank Shaw's new book Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast. And this: "The core of each stop on my book tour is a special dinner that highlights the wild foods of that region in that season." Note to self: Hank will be in San Diego August 18. Here are Hank's thoughts on hunting, and cooking, Ursus americanus, from his excellent blog Hunter Angler Gardener Cook.

Check these out:
Grand Theft Toboggan.
Bird Fight Club.
Awful time sink, that site. This one is too late for Mother's Day, and I know it's supposed to be funny and all, but it made my eyes puddle up. [Watch that bad kid make himself scarce...]

Sad science: Mange Is Linked To Squirrel Decline. For the record, I have not seen any gray squirrels in the mountains so far this year. Not one. Squirrelpocalypse [weeps]. "It is really a huge loss over a large geographic area," says David Myers of The Wildlands Conservancy.  I haven't seen [or heard] any coyotes, either. Two summers ago there were coyotes everywhere. Last summer, hardly any. This year, so far: nada.

Report a Dead Bird or Squirrel. Just what it says.

Cool science: People Keep Making Einstein's Greatest Blunder. I love Starts With A Bang. [The physics of fireworks!]

Politics: my homeboy James Fallows was [is] spot on:

[T]he laziest and ultimately most destructive form of political coverage came when journalists seemed to imagine that they were theater critics or figure-skating judges. The what of public affairs didn't interest them. All they cared about was the how.

Finally, a post from Dipper Ranch with some sorrow in it, and much beauty. Read Scales on My Sleeve and enjoy a rare encounter with the loveliest snake in California.

West wind just whipped through, and I can smell the rain now.

Happy Solstice to all

It's summer! I've been chasing, and just chillaxing. Heard a Flammulated Owl last night, at the Mission Springs Trail Camp south of Heart Bar — and saw a Western Tanager, male, gorgeous, at the cabin this morning. A first visit by my heart bird to the place I love most, how cool is that.

Our local mammals [lightweight division] include Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels, Merriam's Chipmunks, Lodgepole Chipmunks, and a rare visitor: the San Bernardino Flying Squirrel. That's Rocket J. himself checking out a suet feeder in the photo above.

The San Bernardino Flying Squirrel is a California Species of Special Concern, "included on the Special Concern list because of its occurrence in restricted, disjunct populations, a lack of information on the two smallest populations, comparatively low densities of individuals in populations that have been studied, and ongoing habitat fragmentation as a result of development and forest practices within the species range." [Source] Can't tell you how good it is to catch a glimpse of one of these little guys in the forest around the cabin.

For some excellent reading and informative graphics on our flying squirrel, check out the following:

San Bernardino flying squirrel [from Terrestrial Mammal Species of Special Concern in California] [pdf]
Climate change threatens flying squirrels
Petition to list the San Bernardino Flying Squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus californicus) as threatened or endangered under the United States Endangered Species Act [pdf]