Nature upload: the living, traces of the past, finicky finches, and a GAME! =)

The Living

Some lovely lichen I found 'neath an old oak tree

when I was foraging about for some nature coolness.

 

Under the same oak, I found this a few days later.

Looks like a nest with a perfect hen's egg in it, right?

It's fungus. Some kinda puffball, I presume. =)

And, from my field site, a super not great photo of a FABULOUS bird, a phainopepla.

I'd never seen one at the site before, and have only seen them maybe 4 times?

Looks like a black cardinal with red eyes. And makes a sweet little sound.

SUPER cool.

Traces of the Past

Photo that represents much of what I love about my job.

Looking for and detecting wildlife, in whatever form I can.

This is a coyote print in some tasty mud.

And thanks to the smarty tweeple I follow on twitter (e.g., @Laelaps & @LianaBrooks),

I believe THESE are worm tracks.

I only find them RIGHT after a rain storm in areas that are pure dirt (no plants).

I'm super psyched I learned this. Such beautiful tracks.

DH and I were cruising around learning about local mining history.

Our shadows on infrastructure of what I think was a ferry landing at the Merced River.

 It's just off highway 49 (its name is NO coincidence re: 49-er history).

Hills are greening up nicely, around here. Yay! =)

Then we cruised down foothill backroads to where some mines used to be

and found this beautiful fence. I LOVE the way it frames everything.

Finicky Finches

Got photo documentation of our local birds

rejecting the millet in the birdseed I put out for them. =)

House finch grabbing millet to fling...

...annnnd flung!

(See lower right hand corner)

Duly noted. =)

Guessing Game: How Big Is This Oak?

An oak as viewed from within the Ahwahnee in Yosemite NP.

How tall would you guess it is?

If you were standing next to it, how high up would the top of your head go?

Just go ahead and try and picture yourself there. 

Then scroll down to see how tall people are relative to the oak.

derp

derp

derp

So, how close were you to reality?

I think that tree is OVER 70 feet tall.

A towering beauty, to be sure. =)

I hope your winter is cruising along nicely. =)

xoxooxobb

Towering palm trees, I'm awfully frond of you*

I was born in San Diego, and there developed a real weakness for

very tall, slender, old palm trees.

Last week DH & I drove by a part of San Jose that had a lot of them.

I vowed to walk there if possible.

Next morning I googled "palm tree-lined streets San Jose, CA" and BAM!

Palm Haven pops up, established 1913, incorporated in 1917.**

Which I'm thinkin' means these lovelies are one hundred years old.

Wow!!

And they were just a few blocks away from us.

Thank you, magical internet.

Witches can be wounded via impact with palm trees--look out, ladies!

Some of these trees may be nearly 100 feet tall.**

The tallest ones would be the Mexican fan palm (Washingtonia robusta); the species I adore.

And these elegant trees may be just about at their age limit.

L.A. (which also has very old palms) is replacing dying palms

with trees that provide more shade and can remove more pollution.

Palm Haven's tall, thin lovelies. *happy sigh*

We may be living in the golden years of tall, old palms in California.

It might be wise to appreciate them now. =)

In all their spindly glory.

xoxoxobb

P.S. For more info, there's a brief history of palm trees in Southern California online which includes a photo from 1918 Beverly Hills, a long boulevard with stubby little planted palms. SO CUTE!

*With apologies to sesamestreet.org & their charming "Rubber Ducky" song. It's the 1st record I remember getting fm. my parents & I'm pretty sure it made me so happy I cried. Also, apologies for the pun, but it was just SITTING there, STARING at me.

**Wiki page on Palm Haven, and PalmHaven dot info.

cochineal crack up, cultural craftiness, and carnage

 
Thanks to skepticalmoth for posting this amusing bit re: the little bugs used for thousands of years for the red color they produce (to dye clothes & food):


 
In case that doesn't work for you, click here. It's also a delightful statement re: knowledge, learning, etc. AWESOME. MAN, the Brits are good at self- and mutual-deprecation. Ouch!

As skeptical moth rightly points out, these entertaining folks call the bugs beetles, and they are not.

And don't get cochineal mixed up with cochlea--I had to look up the latter just to get my brain to stop trying to figure out what role the ear had in all this. And it isn't the cloaca either (pardon; how does it always come back to monotremes?).

All these words like marbles rattling around in my head: Who am I? What do I mean? How do we relate? Yikes.


Back to cochineal
Per Wiki: "...the insect produces carminic acid that deters predation by other insects. Carminic acid, which occurs as 17-24% of the weight of the dry insects, can be extracted from the insect's body and eggs ... to make carmine dye (also known as cochineal). Carmine is today primarily used as a food colouring and for cosmetics."

Wow. According to Wiki, it takes 70,000 insects to produce one pound of dye. Oh, the humanity!

"Indian Collecting Cochineal with a Deer Tail"

by José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez (1777).

Can you imagine, from the bugs' perspective, reading the following?

"The insects are killed by immersion in hot water (after which they are dried) or by exposure to sunlight, steam, or the heat of an oven. Each method produces a different colour that results in the varied appearance of commercial cochineal. The insects must be dried to about 30 percent of their original body weight before they can be stored without decaying."

(buggy thought bubble: "You people are MONSTERS!")

and

"There are two principal forms of cochineal dye: cochineal extract is a colouring made from the raw dried and pulverised bodies of insects, and carmine is a more purified colouring made from the cochineal. To prepare carmine, the powdered insect bodies are boiled in ammonia or a sodium carbonate solution, the insoluble matter is removed by filtering, and alum is added to the clear salt solution of carminic acid to precipitate the red aluminium salt."

(buggy thought bubble: "arrrrrrrrgh!")

oog. I think I've made myself ill.


ANYhow, I think it's a pretty fascinating intersection of culture, commerce, nature, history, and chemistry.

You just can't make this stuff up.

bb