Yep… many of us “stoic New Englanders” see social distancing as a way of life anyway. 
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My favorite might just be those mating damsel flies toward the end. The badger baby is also pretty irresistable.
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These are from the last few days. It’s also 81°f here.
A Rose pitcherplant and a Beloved Moth caterpillar.
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Though not spectacularly beautiful this is the edible oyster mushroom. I picked about 3/4 of them and left the rest for the bugs. They are one of my favorite wild edible species. Ants love them and many insects use them for water because they have a high water content. I see mosquitoes especially drinking from them.
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The tulip trees remind me of my boyhood in suburban Philadelphia – they were plentiful, and we a really nicely shaped one in the front yard, along with a couple of dogwoods that were beautiful in the spring. We had a tall pair of the poplars close together in the back yard that were nice, too, and a gorgeous red maple that I remember my being with my parents when they bought it at a Sears store in Philadelphia. We brought it home in trunk of the car with its burlap covered root ball, and it became a perfect climbing tree for my boys in the 80s when we were visiting.
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A place with a lot of memories, this is Tomales bay on the Point Reyes peninsula. This is so typical of the landscape here, grassy hills green in the winter and brown in the summers and fall. When Lia’s parents retired they built a modest house on this side of the bay. From there we would walk up this hill to the crest where you could look out on the Pacific on one side and this bay on the other. The houses you see on the other side are the town of Marshall.
When her mother died her dad continued to live here in the place he loved for about ten more years into his nineties before needing to move into town. His only companion was his cat Gracie. She was a supreme huntress and I can recall waking up in the morning to find a wood rat laid open on the living room rug like an illustration from Grey’s anatomy. In this picture she is sitting in his lap looking at him as he naps on his 95th birthday. She looks sweet but her tooth and claw were among the bloodiest here. Though we often saw coyotes and owls (and her dad twice saw mountain lions), she was never carried off on one of her nightly hunts.
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UK government has said we can leave the house for exercise once a day, alone or with household members so long as we stay within 2km of home. Given we have two young boys and dog we’ve grateful for that small freedom. So we’ve been heading to my local ‘patch’ almost daily. Here’s some shots I picked up on those trips:
European peacock Butterfly (Aglais io)
European Comma (Polygonia c-album)
A very fuzzy Great Crested Grebe
Some of my favourite spring flowers: Lesser Celandine
Another fav, the Speedwell.
A pair of Mute Swans
And another fuzzy bird, the Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) this time. You may have to take my word for it though!
Finally, a super cute male Heliophanus sp. Jumping spider on my coffee pot. Just look at those gorgeous lime green pedipalps (front limbs used for ‘feeling’ and mating:
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Some of the creatures I found today. I don’t know the species of most of them yet. Went on a two hour hike in the woods today. Luckily where I live the stipulations to the stay at home orders still allows me to work full time and I can go hiking anywhere that I could before as long as I stay under 10 people and at least 6 feet alway. I never hike with more than one or two people anyways.
I believe the larger lizard is the broad headed skink (red headed skink) and the snake is perhaps the dusky Pygmy rattlesnake.
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Can’t seem to get the edit to work right on my end. But the last pics were:
- The Coral Bean.
- Coral Honeysuckle.
- A yellow skipper on a plant I don’t know.
- Something in the Vaccinium “blueberry” genus. There are like 9 species here and I can’t tell them apart yet. I’ve not studied them though.
- One of the sorrel grass. The Rumex genus. I’m suspecting it’s R. acetosella or R. hastatulus.
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Thanks. I was wondering what that striking red flower was which might also have appeared in your post just before. Never heard of Coral Bean. I like it.
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I really like them too. They are native to USA. At least southeastern USA. They often grow with the coral honeysuckle and though I think it’s clear to tel the difference I see them constantly mistaken for each other , or rather hear them mistaken for each other, from those hiking around me.
Found one with what I believe is a Agathodes designalis “ sky-pointing moth” caterpillar feeding on it. There are actually two of them in the pic. A larger one and a smaller one tucked away inside the pod barely visible. The seeds are bright red and contract seriously with their black pods. The plant in warmer weather can reach 12 feet high and is considered a tree or shrub. Where I live they are mostly considered a deciduous perennial that maxes out around 2-3 feet. The seeds are poisonous but are commonly used as beads.
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Here is a local critter on a beach in San Francisco. I believe it is a Dungeness crab. I don’t think it appreciated my older dog’s interest one bit.
But it had nothing to worry about as my dog regarded it with the same horror/fascination they both have toward feathers. (I think the feather reaction is on account of the filaments moving when they sniff them.)
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Out on a run on a frosty morning today. Early Rye, sprouting from last Fall’s planting I think, deer tracks, a copse of green horse tail under red tip sumac, our dog sniffing at Frozen grass stems, and Frozen Sprouts at the bottom of a ditch
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Here’s a video of our (late lamented) beagle’s reaction to a feather:
(And yes, he ate it in the end.)
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Hilarious! Mine have never been so bold as to actually bite or pick one up. But they both get super animated about them. I think the crab surprised her because she is used to seeing emptied shells wash up but had never seen one alive.
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