Huckleberry Rat

 

Hot Lips
(Salvia microphylla)

What a great surprise to put the flower photo above into Pl@nt ID and get the result of "Hot Lips." I'd seen this one growing in the neighborhood as my wife and I walked home from the bus stop yesterday. We were just coming home from seeing the "Open 2023" exhibit at the De Young Museum (which was outstanding, and I'm not just saying that because my wife has a painting in the show). 

I knew I wanted to photograph the neighbor's flower, so this morning I skulked outside for a dawn patrol flower-snip. Was I caught on someone's doorbell cam? Is there at this very moment a video of my snag being vilified on NextDoor? 

I can only hope so.

While I was out, I also snipped an actual native wildflower -- one of my favorites. I think it's one of my favorites because it blooms in the late summer and fall, a scarlet contrarian. Hummingbirds love it too.

Since I have my trail cams at home, I put them out back to see if I could catch the culprit who's been scratching in my garden. I had a feeling who it was, but there's nothing like getting the video evidence. 

The main surprise was seeing an animal finally go after the remaining huckleberries still stuck to the branches of our back yard Vaccinium. I had to prune it quite a bit a while back when several of the thin branches got so top-heavy with berries that they bent over and snapped.

California Fuchsia
(Epilobium canum)

Formerly known as Zauschneria californica.

Was this the naughty scratcher?

Huckleberry Rat & The Scratcher

* * *

September Trail Cams

 

Deer in Forest Fog

It feels like it's time to find a new camera trap location, but I'm still mulling over the possibilities. When I biked up on Thursday to check on them I ended up taking them home. Now that the cams are gone, I'm sure the bobcats, foxes, coyotes, bucks, and turkeys will frolic like elves, and I will miss it. 

In the meantime I've been wondering who's been digging in my own back yard, so I've got a cam out there to hopefully find out. The usual suspects passed by last night -- cat, rat, hermit thrush, raccoons. A couple critters sniffed around the dig area, but no one actually dug, at least not on camera. I did find the area disturbed this morning, but the disturbance happened (of course) after the video timed out.

Once again, the bobcat only went up the canyon instead of down.... (The camera's info strip went haywire at some point and made the dates wrong.) 

Gray Fox

Coyote passes through the dappled sunlight.

The bucks are starting to get frisky.

* * *

Hazelnut

 

First Hazelnut

After so many years with nothing, the native hazel (Corylus cornuta) we planted in our yard finally produced a nut! I actually found it on the ground this morning. I'd thought the lack of nuts all these years was because there are no other hazels nearby to pollinate the flowers (of which there are many females and males each year), so this is a surprise. This year I'm planning to go find some wild hazelnuts so I can collect pollen to bring home. 

In addition to the above nut, I also found a collection of very small nuts in another kind of plant structure. There's a picture of the two nuts on a hazel leaf below.

In addition to finding the nut on the ground, I also found the inflorescence of one of our succulents (possibly Echeveria cante, which I might previously have misidentified as a Dudleya) had been knocked off -- whether by cat, 'coon, squirrel, rat, or bird, I have no idea. I couldn't let it go to waste, so I photographed it.

On my neighborhood walk today I picked a mallow-family blossom to photograph back at home, and I also took some phone snaps of a few flowers I encountered on my walk.

Hazelnuts on Hazel Leaf

Anisodontea capensis, I believe.

Facing the other way.

Echeveria conte (?)

Zinnia in the 7th Avenue Garden

I believe this is called flowering maple (Callianthe striata).

Natal Lilies (Crinum moorei) at the pond across Stanyan Street from the Haight (where an apartment complex is being built on the old McDonald's property next to Amoeba Records).

* * *

Orange, Rose, Crimson

 

Orange Puffer Fish
(aka Goldfish Plant, Columnea nematanthus)

Although I use Google Maps all the time nowadays, there's still nothing quite as good at inspiring wanderlust as a well-made paper map, which is why I recently picked up a California Road & Recreation Atlas. I look forward to making good use of it, and have already been checking out some of the far corners of the state, from the South Warner Mountains in the north to the Old Woman Mountains in the south, and oh so many intriguing places in between.

Meanwhile, with gas having climbed to $5.89 and still showing no sign of retreat, I'm content to explore the hidden intricacies of the macro world of flowers close enough to gather on foot. 

If you click on the above picture to view it at full size, it's 175-times bigger than the actual flower, which I photographed at 1:1 on a full-frame camera (with no cropping). The vertical images are smaller -- only 78-times life size. I'm always seeing stuff in the pictures that I didn't see IRL, like all the silky spider strands on the orange puffer fish. 

In case you're wondering, orange puffer fish is my own name for the plant since I don't know what its proper name is. I tried to find it on Pl@ntNet to no avail. [UPDATE: I have since learned I had the wrong fish; it's called goldfish plant. And if you accidentally search for "goldfish pants," you'll get plenty of results!]

The plant ID came up with Fuchsia microphylla for these little ones. Despite their tiny size, I often seen bumblebees and even hummingbirds feeding on their nectar.

This is from a large fuchsia vine that I started from a cutting given to me by the neighbor whose oak tree has been sporting parrots lately.

Phone snap showing the relative size of the two fuchsia flowers.

* * *

Macro Madness

 

Rock Purslane (Cistanthe grandiflora)
(click to view larger)

What's worth doing in nature photography? 

I googled the question just for the heck of it and did not get the kind of responses I'm looking for. What I'm looking for is a project I can take on within my limited travel budget, with my current camera gear and 2WD passenger car, that would be fun and interesting. Bonus points for creating something of lasting value beyond my own self-interest.

When I first got hooked on nature photography in the early 1980s, in part by discovering the Santa Ynez Mountains and the San Rafael Wilderness Area near my home in Santa Barbara, I thought it would be cool to photograph all of California's wilderness areas. Back then, there were about thirty (ditto for the number of California condors left in the wild). The Dick Smith Wilderness, for example, which is adjacent to the San Rafael Wilderness, hadn't been designated yet.

Fast-forward about 40 years, and I'm finally retired and have the time to take on a big project like that. Except for one little problem. There are now five-times as many wilderness areas! (And in other good news, there are now about 560 California condors, of which 347 are living in the wild.)

Since there's probably no way I'm going to be able to photograph all those wilderness areas, I'll bundle them into groups based on their proximity to each other, then pick one to represent the whole group. I'm not sure if this will have value beyond my own self-interest, but maybe an organization like the California Wilderness Coalition would be interested in a windfall of such imagery: "Here's what this place looked like, and what I found living there, in the year 2024." And beyond, of course. The plan would be to carry on as long as I can.

The book I put together on Mt. Tamalpais (now available in PDF for the low, low price of just $15!) is composed of pictures I shot over about 20 years. With luck I'll have another 20 years to get to explore at least the periphery of many of California's wilderness areas.

For the pictures in this post I snagged a couple of flowers that have intrigued me on recent walks around the neighborhood, including a flowering Heteromeles arbutifolia on the edge of Golden Gate Heights Park. I decided to try a light background for a change. And apropos of nothing, I saw an osprey gliding south over Ocean Beach this morning -- the first time I've ever seen an osprey out there.

Toyon
(Heteromeles arbutifolia)

Veronica sp.

Veronica sp.

* * *

Yard Flowers

 

Lone Violet

We'd planned to go for a hike on Mt. Tam for the first day of autumn (Friday), but the smoke was kind of a drag, and it was forecast to be clear again by tomorrow (Sunday) so instead we drove over to Sloat Garden Center and bought a bunch of plants and a couple big bags of soil. We'd been meaning to get around to doing some work in our back yard for weeks, but thanks to the smoke, we finally got it done. We went mostly for perennials that will draw bees and hummingbirds, and hopefully they will be able to survive our yard, which gets direct sun for only a couple of hours a day (assuming it's even sunny at all).

It didn't take long to do all that so, still needing some indoor sport, I set up a few more macro compositions using violets, Clivia, Dudleya, and red trumpet vine, with leaves of hazel and redwood sorrel providing some greenery.

Red Trumpet Vine, Deconstructed

Clivia

Dudleya

Violet

The Set-up.

* * *

Backyard Beauties

 

Hummingbird Attractor

I didn't get out much today due to the smoke hazard, but I did watch the cherry-headed conures in my neighbor's oak tree for a while, and while I was back there I figured why not set up a couple more macro shots in my living room using backyard flowers. It's not like I have to get back to work or anything.

Some of the parrots were strolling around the tree branches and pulling off acorns and whatnot (I could hear all kinds of stuff falling from the tree into the leaf litter, but couldn't see what any of it was). Meanwhile several of the other parrots were paired up to groom each other.

An immature parrot picked up some lichen but didn't appear to eat it, then a little farther along the branch it picked up a stick. Unfortunately, it then turned its back to me and no doubt did something fascinating with the stick, like use it to preen its breast feathers, or just chomp on it like Edward G. Robinson with a cigar.

A chestnut-backed chickadee captured a little caterpillar.

* * *

Grandview Park

 

View toward downtown San Francisco with faded lizard tail flowers sprawled along Grandview Park's fence line.

My chores done for the day, I walked over to Grandview Park to get a little nature fix. The sky was a mix of sun and low clouds, and it was warm enough to be in shorts and a t-shirt despite a ballcap-stealing wind coming in off the ocean. I brought the FZ80 along just in case something called out to me, and it didn't take long to hear the siren song. Just half-way up the stairs I was struck by a low-slung, probably wind-pruned, female coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis) heavily frosted with white seeds.

After that I was on the lookout for other potential subjects and snapped some photos of lizard tail (Eriophyllum staechadifolium) and coast goldenrod (Solidago spathulata). The goldenrod had numerous west coast lady butterflies (Vanessa annabella) and common drone flies (Eristalis tenax), as well as bumblebees (moving too fast for me to get a decent photo), feasting on its nectar.

Looking out toward the bay I saw a container ship, the CMA CGM Hermes, which I thought was kind of a cool name since just yesterday I saw an excellent play narrated by Hermes, called Hadestown.

After shooting the plants and insects with the FZ80 I still felt like doing more photography, so I collected a smidgen of plant material to try some 1:1 macro photography back at home. The focus stacks ran from 21 frames to 38 frames, so I could never have done them in the field with all that wind (not to mention all the people and dogs). Even at home I had to contend with changing window light due to the mix of sun and clouds, but now that I've got my indoor set-up pretty dialed in, I'd like to do more 1:1 stuff. It's always interesting to see details with the camera that my naked eye couldn't make out.

Coyote Brush Frosted with Seeds

A Maltese-flagged container ship, recently by way of Thailand, Vietnam, China (and Los Angeles), brings its cargo to the Port of Oakland.

West Coast Lady #1

Common Drone Fly #1

West Coast Lady #2

Common Drone Fly #2

These are the subjects in the macro photos below.

Coast Goldenrod

Lizard Tail

Coyote Brush #1

Coyote Brush #2

Coast Buckwheat Gone to Seed

* * *