Down in the Garden!

Steller's Jay in the Rain - Cyanocitta stelleri

Just a week ago it rained again! This time we got 3/4's of an inch of rain and everything got well soaked! Walking in the rain, listening to the sound of heavy rain on the roof, and smelling the wonderful damp-earth fragrance filled my day with joy! What a miracle! Especially at this time of year when everything is so dry, and forest fires are on everyone's mind.  Fingers crossed that more rain comes again in the near future! 

Down in our garden so much is happening! Lots of butterflies and tons of insects are still feeding on the flowers! Reptiles, especially lizards, are abundant right now, while the daytime temps are still warm. Some of the sunflowers are going to seed, and new birds have arrived to feast! Year-round residents, such as Steller's Jays, are also enjoying the abundance of seeds!

Steller's Jay - Cyanocitta stelleri

Steller's Jays are quite acrobatic while feeding on Sunflower seeds! They tip upside-down, leap up from the ground to peck at seeds, and sometimes perch on a stem with their heads twisted at odd angles to get seeds! It's quite amusing to watch them!

Lesser Goldfinch (juvenile) - Carduelis psaltria

There are lots of Lesser Goldfinches gleaning sunflower seeds down in our garden. More keep showing up every week! Males, females, and a few juveniles have been weekly visitors. It seems that family members stick together in loose groups, while they're feeding in our garden. I love to hear their constant, sweet "beeping"!  When the temps get cooler, they will migrate down to the foothills and valleys of California for the winter. 

Lesser Goldfinch (female) - Carduelis psaltria

Lesser Goldfinches usually have 2 broods a year, sometimes even three!  These beautiful little birds have their babies later in the year than most songbirds. They time the hatching, and subsequent fledging of their nestlings to match this time of year, when seeds are newly available.

Lesser Goldfinch (male) - Carduelis psaltria

Goldfinch diet is mainly seeds, but they will also eat berries, tree buds, and small insects. They always travel in small to largish flocks. The black cap easily distinguishes the male from the female Lesser Goldfinch.

Western Tiger Swallowtail - Papilio rutulus rutulus

The Western Swallowtail Butterflies have been in our garden for a few months now! Other butterfly species have come and gone, but the Swallowtails are still here! It turns out that our neighborhood has everything that the Swallowtails prefer!

-The favored habitat for adult Swallowtails is woodlands near rivers and streams, just what our neighborhood is! 

-Swallowtails feed on the nectar of many flowers, including the Zinnias in our garden! 

-Male Swallowtails patrol canyons and hilltops for females, and our garden is in a canyon! 

-After mating the females will lay eggs on the leaves of Cottonwoods, Aspen, willows, wild cherry, and Ash.  We have a few Cottonwood trees and LOTS of willows in our neighborhood! The caterpillars feed on the leaves of these plants, then overwinter in a chrysalis.

No wonder the Swallowtails have been sticking around!

Achemon Sphinx Moth - Eummorpha achemon

In my neighbor's grape arbor I was surprised to find a reddish, large caterpillar this week! inaturalist.org identified it as a Achemon Sphinx Moth caterpillar, that feeds on grape vines!  Once it is fully grown, the caterpillar will pupate in an underground burrow. It will emerge as an adult in the spring, that might feed on the nectar from the phlox flowers in our garden! I have never seen anything like it!  I've never even seen an adult Achemon Sphinx Moth! How cool!

Common Aerial Yellow Jacket nest - Dolichovespula arenaria

Down the road from our garden is a Common Aerial Yellow Jacket nest. Compared to ground yellowjackets, common aerial yellowjackets are less aggressive and do not have the same preference for meat. There are about 20 species of social wasps in North America. These wasps are in the family Vespidae and typically fall into three groups: yellowjackets, hornets and common paper wasps. The following information is from the website https://genent.cals.ncsu.edu.

"Eusocial behavior among wasps is found only in certain members of the family Vespidae. These insects are commonly called paper wasps, hornets, and yellowjackets. They build communal nests by mixing wood fibers with saliva to form a paper-like material that can be molded into brood cells and other nest components. The brood comb (cells where larvae are reared) is always constructed like an inverted umbrella with open ends of the hexagonal cells facing downward. Workers usually cling to the underside of the comb as they guard the nest, feed the larvae, and perform other housekeeping chores. All social wasps are carnivores; their prey consists mostly of caterpillars and flies. The wasps chew up their victims’ bodies into a paste that can be fed to their larvae and, in return, the larvae produce a nutritional syrup that is consumed by the adults. A small colony of 200 yellowjackets may kill and eat about 5000 caterpillars over the course of a summer."

Larva chambers and exterior "paper" from an aerial paper wasp nest

Here is more information than you need about yellow jacket wasps, but I find it fascinating!  It is from the website at https://georgiawildlife.com/its-yellow-jacket-time.

"Throughout most of the summer, yellow jackets spend much of their time hunting spiders, caterpillars, flies and other invertebrates. It has been estimated that yellow jackets are capable of capturing more than 2 pounds of insects from a 2,000-square-foot garden plot. This member of the wasp family also scavenges everything from dead worms and insects to road-killed animals and other carrion.

The yellow jacket is a social insect that lives in colonies consisting of a queen, infertile female workers and males. The queen is much larger than the other colony members, reaching about three-quarters of an inch in length. She is also the only member of the colony that is capable of overwintering.

Once the queen emerges from her winter sanctuary, her first task is to find a suitable place to establish a nest. Most often, she selects an abandoned rodent burrow or other hole in the ground. Occasionally, yellow jackets will also nest in buildings, abandoned vehicles and hollow trees. Often the potential nesting sites are in our gardens or around tree trunks and the like.

Underground yellow jacket nest that had been dug up by a bear

Once a site is selected, the queen chews up bits of wood to the consistency of wood pulp and uses it to build a small nest. When dry the nest looks as if its fashioned from thick paper. She then begins laying eggs, which hatch into infertile female workers in about three weeks. For the rest of her life, the queen remains in the nest laying eggs. The workers are responsible for expanding the nest, providing food for her and her young, and defending the colony.

By the end of the summer, a typical nest will be roughly the size and shape of a football and house up to 800 yellow jackets or more.

Most of us are well aware that yellow jackets will vigorously defend their nests and sting when provoked. During an attack, a yellowjacket can sting multiple times without losing its stinger. In addition, when it feels threatened, the insect releases something called an alarm pheromone. When other yellow jackets detect the chemical they immediately become aggressive and join the attack.

For the most part, yellow jackets will not attack unless they are antagonized or we venture too close to a colony. However, late in the summer folks seem to be stung more often than at any other time of the year. This may be because yellow jackets are more abundant. However, they also become less tolerant of one another and seem more prone to sting without provocation. Since this behavioral change coincides with a switch from a predominantly protein diet to one rich in carbohydrates and sugars, some suggest this may affect their aggressive fall behavior.

All while this is taking place, new queens and males are hatching in nests scattered across the countryside. Soon the young queens will begin storing the fat that will sustain them throughout the coming winter. Eventually they will reach the point where they abandon their nest and are pursued by the males. Once mating takes place, the males die and the fertile queens search for suitable winter quarters such as a hollow tree or beneath the bark of a tree.

Back at the nest, the number of workers slowly dwindles. With the onset of cold weather, the workers and the old queen die and the nest begins to deteriorate. The once vibrant hub of activity will probably never be used again.

In spite of its obnoxious behavior, yellow jackets do have some redeeming values. Remarkably, mammals such as bears and skunks dig up the nests and devour the juicy young."

Western Fence Lizard - Sceloporus occidentalis

I've been seeing lots of these little lizards in our garden. Most of them are only 2.5" long! I'm hesitant to try and catch them, because I don't want to stress them out! They are so camouflaged in the dry grasses and weeds! These little ones won't be full-sized till next Spring. Right now they are busy eating a variety of insects! Western Fence Lizards are the most commonly seen lizard in our garden. 

Northern Pacific Rattlesnake - Crotalus oreganus oreganus

One evening this week, as I was watering the garden, I was surprised to see a baby rattlesnake!  It was curled up, and the ground around it was very damp.  I think I might have accidentally "watered" it! The pattern of its scales was so bold and beautiful!  The rattle was a dull bluish color and didn't have any "buttons" yet. It was only about 8" long, and looked pretty skinny. In fact its skin looked "loose" on its body! Baby rattlesnakes eat small lizards, and young rodents. Lucky for this snake, there are LOTS of little lizards in our garden right now.

Northern Pacific Rattlesnake - Crotalus oreganus oreganus

 I watched this little snake for a few minutes until it uncoiled and scooted away underneath a piece of wood.  It moved amazingly fast! I am definitely watching my step out in the garden now! The following information is from the website at Mount Diablo Interpretive Association, https://www.mdia.org/articles/northern-pacific-rattlesnake.

"There are many, many myths and exaggerations concerning snakes in general, but there are even more concerning rattlesnakes. The Northern Pacific Rattlesnake rarely grows more than 36 inches in length - one over 48 inches is a real granddaddy, yet I commonly have people tell me stories of the 6- to 7-foot rattlesnakes they have encountered in the Bay Area (fear and imagination go together). The actual striking distance for a snake from a coiled position is approximately a third the distance of its body length, but let’s give the snake the benefit of half the distance, just to be safe. That means a three-foot snake can only strike out approximately 1-1.5 feet. You would have to be right in that snake's face to get him to strike. They do not strike without reason. Leave the snake alone and he will leave you alone.

In late summer to early fall, we enter the birthing season for snakes. Rattlesnakes are one of the few live-bearing snakes (opposed to egg-lying). Mother rattlesnakes can give birth to 7-15 young who actually stay with her for the first couple of weeks. The young are distinctly patterned replicas of the adult except they initially have a single button on their tail. They will not get a second rattle until they shed their skin for the first time, generally within a few weeks. Rattlesnakes get a new rattle every time they shed and may shed three to four times in the same year. Therefore, the number of rattles does not tell the age of the snake. Secondly, as the snakes age, rattles will commonly break off.

Young rattlesnakes possess venom when they are born - it is the same venom as the adults, just less of it. The bite of a small rattlesnake is NOT more venomous than an adult, but adult rattlesnakes have been known to give a dry bite (no venom), 30 to 40 percent of the time. The young snakes are still learning to control envenomation and therefore do inject venom with each bite. Nevertheless, any bite from a rattlesnake needs immediate medical attention. Although death from a bite is very rare (in the United States, 10-12 deaths from venomous snakebites occur annually per 10,000 bites), hospitalization with severe pain and suffering is the norm."

European Mantis - Mantis religiosa

Just this week I spotted three non-native, invasive, European Mantis in our garden. There is a Praying Mantis that is native to California that looks quite similar, except that it doesn't have markings that look like an "eye" on its inner arm. In all mantises the prominent front legs are bent and held together at an angle that suggest the position of prayer, hence their name. I think a more appropriate name would be "aliens". Their head and eyes look especially like a typical alien, with their tiny pinpoint pupils!

They use camouflage to ambush their prey. The one above was in a bunch of dry grasses, and was pretty difficult to distinguish! Their arms are their main weapons, and can move with lightning speed. They use the spikes on their arms to skewer and hold prey. They eat only live prey, including crickets, grasshoppers, small lizards, and other mantises! Females often attack and kill approaching males. If males are lucky enough to sneak up behind a female undetected, they will immediately grab the female and mate with her. However, females are known to eat the head of the male they are mating with! Apparently they need the extra protein to create their egg mass!

I've never seen mantises mating and that's fine with me!  Sheesh!

Urban Anthophora - Anthophora urbana 

The bee pictured above is an Urban Anthophora, a type of "Digger Bee". Right now there are LOTS of these bees in our garden. Their names comes from their habit of digging underground tunnels, in which to lay their eggs! Like Bumblebees, they will make a brood pot out of wax at the end of a tunnel, and fill it with nectar and pollen. They then lay an egg on the top of this brood pot and seal up the tunnel. When the larva hatches it feeds on this stored food. Once the honey and pollen are consumed, the larva become dormant and remain underground for many months. In spring they will pupate and emerge as adults. In some species the male larvae hatch before the female larvae. They spend the first days of their lives hovering above the nesting area, waiting for the females to emerge! As soon as a female emerges, a male mates with her! Sometimes, the males even dig the females out! Sheesh!

Bee Wolf - Philanthus multimaculatus

The Bee Wolf is a wasp not a bee! As its name implies, it is a predator of bees! The Bee Wolf digs tunnels underground, with a brood chamber at the end of each tunnel. It will then paralyze bees by stinging them, and put 1-6 of them in each brood chamber! It will then lay one egg on top of a paralyzed bee and seal up the brood chamber. When the larva hatches it will feed on the paralyzed bees, pupate, and emerge out months later as an adult!

Mountain Ash berries - Sorbus californica

What's happening in the Lakes Basin? 

What's happening on the River?

Check back in two weeks for the answers to these questions and more!

After 8 years of posting my blog, I've decided that I'm only going to post my blog twice monthly from now on. My next post will be on the weekend of September 14th. See you then!

Your questions and comments are always appreciated. Please email me at northyubanaturalist@gmail.com. Thanks!