February flash, flung 1 day late =D

 He is glorious; she has the munchies.

It's that time of year, turkeys parading all over.

I LOVE the percussion males provide to accompany their dance. SO COOL!

Squirrel-y cunning leads to tasty breakfast.

Extremely impressive core strength in this creature.

BIG THING FOR FEBRUARY:

new-to-me species!

Common sharp-tailed snake (Contia tenuis) I found while raking around the grape arbor.

 Pretty gorgeous tummy, eh?

Those are pine needles, so you can see this is a SMALL snake.

It was kinda cold, so I righted the snake for a photo,

then returned it to its home under a bunch of leaf litter.

Such an exciting discovery, and I'm glad it was unharmed (far as I could tell).

For more info on this species, I highly recommend its page at Calherps.

Now that gardening activity is on the upswing (here in the northern hemisphere),

a friendly reminder to CHECK under your row covers

EACH a.m. & release anything trapped w/in. =)

Beautiful male wasp (ichneumon, I believe)

I found under my row cover and released. 

It was 0% aggressive and, btw, males don't have the

equipment to sting. Note LACK of pointy barb @ end. =)

From February 1st--note the snow on the ground.

Seems like FOREVER ago. =)

Super cool stuff soil does when the cold freezes the water out.

I didn't grow up in really cold places, so this is fascinating to me. 

One of the first macro photos I ever took was

of this non-native early bloomer, red-stemmed filaree.

Changed my view of the world.

I'm a sucker for visible pollen grains, especially on purple anthers! =)


A lovely little flower...

Gorgeous small beetle I saw clambering across the greenery as I photographed the above flower.

So glad I got to see it.

Wildlife prints I found at the work site:

best part is the gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) print...

you can SEE the fur on the underside of the fox feet. SO cool!

K. That's some of the myriad delights that transpired in spring.

March onward!!! =)

xoxooxbb

plant that blooms so hard you can HEAR it, and a tiny little beauty

 Tiny Beauty

More red stemmed filaree (Erodium cicutarium),

also known as stork's bill because of what their seeds look like which,

incidentally, can feel like STEEL stabbing through your sneakers.

It's a flat little plant, blooming this month, but I never knew

until I stared rudely at it w/a macro

how amazing its architecture is. Stunner.

(seeing individual pollen grains makes me swoon)

Blue anthers? Hot pink stigma? What?!? 

Little honey bee excitedly floating from flower to flower in February.

I'm curious why the bee is sipping where she's sipping.

Where does the lovely nectar come out?

Is it there so that the plant can brush against the bee's tummy

to pick up and deposit pollen?

These are my questions.

Hark, I Hear Spring!

Practically the only other thing blooming right now

is the Mariposa manzanita (Arctostaphylos viscida ssp. mariposa)

(with HUGE thanks to randomtruth for correcting my mis-ID!):

However, this plant blooms in SUCH GREAT abundance, you can HEAR it.

Honest.

You'll be outside in the garden, kicking around, pretending to work, when:

Hark! What is that low buzzing coming from the ENTIRE property?

That's when you realize there are LEGIONS of bees ALL OVER

these tree/shrubs, and giant bumblebees seem to be setting up territories

to guard their particular patch o' manzanita blooms.

Pretty smart to bloom early when the bees are THIRSTY for fresh nectar

and hardly anything else is blooming, so you get LOTS of attention.

And I didn't see this bug until I uploaded the photos:

And only took one photo of this clump, so that bug WINS!

No idea what it is.

Besides GREAT at being overlooked.

Just like the red stemmed filaree.

I love "discovering" amazing things that have been there all along.

Nature: the more you look, the more you walk around, gobsmacked.

Love it.

xoxoxo

bb

man--the shots I miss to keep my chickens alive... (plus spring flowers)

                
I just chased off our local bobcat, who was SIX FEET outside my window, IN THE SUN. Holy cow. Whatta photo-op.

I hesitated 2 beats, DYING to pick up my camera vs. scare it off, but it was aiming at our Rhode Island red, Fanny, who was foraging innocently in our garden, another 20 yards (i.e. a few bobcat-bounds) away.

So,  I got up and knocked on the window. It turned 180 degrees and ran away. Here are the best shots I got, OB-viously not as good as I could have, but I'm quite sure the only reason I get to see this animal so regularly is that we have tasty, charming chickens luring it from the periphery.

 (per usual, click to enlarge)

(good reminder to get rid of that blue tarp...)

It also set me to wondering if we are now seeing the bobcat more than we had because the fox is gone. I learned years ago (from Kevin Crooks, http://warnercnr.colostate.edu/~kcrooks/, while he was becoming a Dr.) that in southern California, foxes and coyotes don't seem to share territories. Also, just looked it up on Wikipedia (I know, not a thorough literature search), and the ONE study they cite re: this issue indicates that bobcats are not competitively excluded by red foxes or coyotes. In Maine. Which means, for here, who knows? =)

So, on to other matters, like my documenting Spring in the Sticks via photos, and the promised red maids, and other participants...

Charming Calandrinia ciliata, a.k.a. red maids, making my flagstone step welcome and attractive.

Closer shot of actual flower and happy grass.

Also saw this, which is, I believe, red-stemmed filaree, Erodium cicutarium, a non-native little flower who's seed can stab through just about any footwear. A-MA-zing. AND, the dried, detached seed moves with changes in humidity to corkscrew into the soil. Incredible adaptation.

Next up is this charmer, which I did NOT expect. However, thanks to you and what I'm learning from this spring bloom log, I may learn to expect it this early next year.

Baby blue-eyes, Nemophila menziesii, is native. Be sure and click on the photo to see it's charming companion--v. cool bug with great eyes. Also, to see this flower's interesting anthers--I'd never noticed that before.

Not far from here is a place that gets nearly solid fields of the stuff, so when (and if) it's really going this year, I'll try and get some pics for you.

xoxo the biobabbler

P.S. Am right now surrounded by yellow-rumped warblers and western bluebirds, swooping and hopping all over our grasses.