Bird nerds
We've been doing a little birding this week at the Santa Ana wildlife refuge and at Laguna Atascosca.
Altamira Oriole
green jays
American Kestrel
great kiskadee
Most everything we saw was too far away for good photos from a rank amateur...these are snow geese all around the water in the top of the photo.
Not unusual birds but kinda nice to see. We did see one rarity....the Aplamado Falcon.
This is what we should have seen, but
This is what we actually saw.
With the scope, we could identify the bird but my camera wasn't quite that powerful. That is the bird, on the left side of the platform. Squint a little.
Nesting pairs of aplamado falcons were brought to Laguna Atascosca to reintroduce them to this area and that platform you see is where they released them so this guy was probably visiting the old homestead.
This is a Yucca in bloom but that could not happen without the inter dependency of the plant with a certain moth that only pollinates Yucca plants
This female moth gathers up some pollen from a yucca blossom, wads it up in a ball under her chin and then goes to another plant where she makes sure no other moth has laid eggs. Her antennae can smell it if there has been another female before her.
Finding an unpollinated yucca blossom, she deposits her eggs. Then she goes to the stigma of the flower and takes some of the pollen from under her chin (that came from another plant) and places it on the stigma. Pollination has taken place which insures that seeds will be there for the lavae.
Both plant and moth are happy and thrive.
The guide at the wildlife refuge says that there are about 70 varieties of yucca and each has it's own specific variety of moth for this interdependent process. Remarkable!
This little western screech owl lives in this tube just up over the door to the park office. Apparently he is not much bothered by thecameras and people coming and going .
How did this happen? If I am seeing this right, there appears to be a jeep on the second floor of this crumbling building.
This dude on a billboard has my vote for the cheesiest mustache ever.
Covered in bees! This joke is only funny to those who are Eddie Izzard fans. ( This was an outside lemonade stand on a hot day)
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