Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
Just some #mosstodon from a recent hike in the Palos Verdes Peninsula hills near Los Angeles. There’s a nature preserve along one of the canyons with a stream running through it that actually has water after this winter’s repeated storms, unlike when I went there last summer (or was it fall?) And it was completely dry.
Finally settled on this #GulfFritillary #Butterfly as my best #photo on Flickr for the year. I like some of the other photos better for where I was, or what I was trying to do with the shot, but I think this came out better overall.
Other candidates include a squirrel, autumn trees, and black-and-white sunbeams, but this was the most attention-catching at a first glance.
A painted lady (or related) #butterfly seen while out walking today.
Some #butterflies spotted the other day while hiking. A gulf fritillary (orange), some kind of blue, possibly a marine blue (tiny with brown wings and a blue body), and possibly a cloudless sulphur (yellow).
The blues are always hard to spot because they’re so small, and the sulphurs just don’t want to pause most of the time. But the fritillaries are more willing to stop, and there were SO MANY of them at the gardens on Monday.
Maybe a cloudless sulphur? Whatever it is, these yellow ones hardly ever pause long enough for me to take a picture.
There were so. many. fritillaries.
I went to the same park again today. I spotted a Fox Squirrel eating a pine cone in a tree elsewhere in the park, and a California Ground Squirrel standing guard outside the enclosure’s chain link fence.
Seriously, it. did. not. move. for several minutes while another ground squirrel ran inside the fence and waited, and I moved to a better angle for photos, until it abruptly turned around and ran through or under the fence.
On Photog.Social
Fox squirrel on iNaturalist
Ground Squirrel on iNaturalist
Another Ground Squirrel on iNaturalist
A week later, all the weeds in the enclosure where I saw the hawk have been cleared out and the feral palm trees cut down.
That’s probably why I was able to get a clear view of some of the ground squirrels, looking out from their burrows and climbing around on the tree stumps.
At the same park where I spotted a Cooper’s Hawk and a ground squirrel a week or two ago, in a fenced-off area around a pair of electric transmission towers. Since then, all the weeds and feral palm trees have been cleared out, leaving nearly bare ground, but the squirrels are still there, climbing around on the stumps and burrowing.
Single squrirel on iNaturalist
Pair of squirrels on iNaturalist
I startled a ground squirrel while looking for something that was chirping in a fenced-off area of a park with a pair of transmission towers.
The squirrel hid, but this hawk – which I suspect was looking for the squirrel – flew out and perched on the fence for a few minutes before flying up to one of the lower struts on the nearer tower.
#photo #birds #nature #hawk #CoopersHawk
I heard repeated chirping from a fenced-off area of a park with a pair of transmission towers. As I got closer, I couldn’t spot a bird doing the chirping, but I did see a ground squirrel hiding under a small palm tree. I took a photo from a distance, then moved closer, at which point I startled the squirrel, which ran into one of the holes, and also a hawk, which flew from who knows where inside the fenced area to the edge of the fence. I was able to walk around and get some nice clear shots of the hawk, both as it sat on the fence and after it flew up onto one of the lower struts of the nearer tower.
Some #butterflies from an exhibit, including a banded orange, a postman, an two morphos (they had SO many morphos)…
one of which decided to land on my leg and stay there. They had made it clear that we were not to touch the butterflies so as not to damage the wings with skin oils, so when it still hadn’t left after a couple of minutes, I asked a staff member to remove it, and they coaxed it away with a sponge brush soaked in gatorade.
A #MonarchButterfly spotted while walking around the neighborhood the other day.
#nature #photo #butterfly #flowers
Some #florespondence from last weekend’s walk at the botanic gardens.
I didn’t write down what the yellow flower is, but iNat suggests it’s Senna didymobotrya, a cassia native to Africa.
The magnolia was a popular nectar spot: every single flower that I could see had multiple bees crawling around in it.
#flowers #plants #nature #photo
Sculpture at the garden. There are a half dozen pieces scattered around the grounds of this botanical garden. Pictured here are Fuller (as in Buckminster) by Doris Sung and Trace by Nancy Graves.
Fuller is near the entrance, so I see it most times I go walking there, but Trace is waaaaay on the other side.
#sphere #photo #art #buckyball #outdoor #sculpture
Some birds spotted on a hike yesterday morning: a California Towhee (the mature one perched on top of a bush) and a bushtit (looking very birb-like). A whole lot of the latter were flying back and forth between the trees on either side of the path, barely stopping long enough for me to point the camera in the right direction.
Pelican Cove, just past the point with the lighthouse. Unlike other parts of the preserve, there’s a trail here that lets you hike down to the (rocky) beach. Of course then you have to hike back up again.
I don’t know what kind of rock this is or why it looks like layers of thin pastry (or maybe a sponge), but it certainly looked interesting!
#cove #ocean #nature #california #rocks #photo #gloomy
Coastal hike at Vicente Bluffs Reserve, on the peninsula southwest of Los Angeles.
#nature #ocean #california #hiking #flowers #cove #coast #florespondence #photo
Scenes from a seasonal marsh. Low areas collect water and form ponds during winter and spring, then it dries out over the summer. All the ground in these photos except on the near side of the logs in the last picture usually spends part of the year underwater.
The lowest part of the preseve is also where the most trees are (presumably because water has more time to soak into the ground there).
Two birds spotted while hiking the trails on top of the coastal bluffs southwest of Los Angeles. First a lesser goldfinch, which took me forever to actually catch on camera (there were 3 or 4 of them flitting around and not stopping for very long anywhere!) and a black phoebe that was perched a few yards from the trail.
#birds #photo #nature #finch #phoebe
