Ramblings with Rebecca October 19 - 30, 2004
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Ramblings with Rebecca October 19 - 30, 2004 ANNOUNCEMENTS: Your school program has been working hard this year and has developed a lot of good ideas to share with you. You’ll be hearing more about these in upcoming issues California Sister of the Nutshell, however Sue Walker, School Program Committee Chair has asked me to include this note in the meantime. The School Program Committee would like to remind all active docents, regardless of how long you’ve been hiking in the program, that a great learning opportunity awaits you if you take advantage of the knowledge of other docents by arranging to shadow a class visit or hike. New approaches to familiar challenges, new ideas for communicating information, new trail tips and classroom management techniques are all possible! If you are interested in doing this, you can certainly call a fellow docent and ask their permission to shadow them in the class or on the trail. Your School Program Committee is continuing to work on this and other ideas to make your experiences positive and effective. Also, please remember that visitors – of any age– are not to pick up souvenirs on the preserve. Feathers and other neat stuff is to be left where found after you’ve all had the chance to enjoy a closer look. That allows others to enjoy the sightings and also leaves this stuff for animals’ use. Re: HOW TO GET RAMBLINGS: If you haven’t already done so, please check out the Volunteer page on the ACR Website. This is becoming a very important tool for docent communication. I have begun posting Ramblings there and would like to get all docents who currently receive Ramblings by email to access them on the webpage instead. When we get to that point, it will make the electronic version of the Ramblings easier for everyone, and I won’t have to maintain an email list of > 100 or send out 4 different emails to reach all of you on my list! If you haven’t tried it yet, go to www.egret.org and then look for the word “volunteers” in the lower left of the homepage. Click on that word and when a new window opens, type in “volunteer” for the user name and “newt” for the password (no quotes)- NOTE : THIS IS A CORRECTION FROM THE DIRECTIONS PRINTED IN LAST RAMBLINGS. A new page will open that will have a link that says “Bouverie Preserve docents”. Click on that, and then on the word “Ramblings”. Then you can click on the date of the most current Ramblings posted. I know this sounds like many steps, but the really great thing is that after you’ve done it once, this will all become very straight-forward and quick! Also, with this set-up, I can post Ramblings with pictures & map as well and it should be easy for most everyone to open regardless of which work processing program you have or if you use a Macintosh or PC. If you do not have Acrobat Reader, the website also has a link for you to download this very slick and free program (which you will need to open the Ramblings). Old issues of Ramblings will remain archived on this page for quite a while, so you can go back and read them even if you have lost the version you printed out or saved to your computer! Questions about the webpage? Talk with Diane Jacobson, BP docent liaison to the committee coordinating the volunteer webpage! And thanks, Diane, for all of your work on this! ON THE TRAIL 1] I am seeing a lot of late season butterflies active recently. Where the Yellow Brick Road and Woodland Trail junction, I watched a California Sister butterfly (Adelpha bredowii) flitting over the trail. This species will overwinter as larvae, and the flight season for adults typically runs through October, which means the adults are nearly finished for the year, and are probably busy laying eggs in the few days left to them. The larval host plants are oak trees. 2] The Yellow Brick Road heading toward the Canyon Trail, I saw a number of grasshoppers showing under-wing “flash-coloration” of red or yellow. You recall that this serves the straw- colored insects well by leading avian hunters to believe they are seeking a bright colored morsel among the dried vegetation… a color the critters hide by closing their wings, upon landing! 3] At the first creek access point, watch for yellow jacket activity. Last week a couple of kids were stung there and there were quite a few of these yellow and black striped scavengers around. I went to look for a wasp nest in the area, with no success, but still urge caution here. Actually, until there is significant rain or a cold snap, I surge caution everywhere. Be sure to cover food and drink between bites and sips to limit the spread of scent that might attract these stingers! In this area I also watched and listened to a mixed foraging flock of songbirds among the leaves of the Oregon Ash (Fraxinus latifolia). These groups of birds on the move are pretty common this time of year. I saw Chestnut-backed Chickadees and Hutton’s Vireos in this group busily feeding pretty close to where I stood. Wouldn’t it be cool if a few Yellow Jackets ended up in their lunch? Also, lots of bird guano – “white wash” – on the rocks in the creek here. There is always some evidence that tells a story of what’s been going on. Even if I’d been to busy to notice the flitting birds, this sign would have remained Oregon Ash to remind me of avian visitors! I saw a few more California Sister Butterflies here, and also a new-to-me species of year- round flier, the California Tortoiseshell Butterfly, (Nymphalis californica). I found one, sans abdomen, floating on the surface of the creek water here, and brought it back for a better ID. You can look at it under the microscope behind the stage. If you do look at it, notice the sculpted edges of the wings, and flip it over to see how the under-wing surfaces resemble dead leaves. Adults fly all year but mostly from February through early April. This species hibernates as adults. Larval host plants are California Lilac & California Tortoiseshell Butterfly Buckbrush (Ceanothus thyrsiflorus and C. cuneatus), which we have aplenty at Bouverie Preserve. 4] At creek access point # 2 , I watched a lovely, large, late-season butterfly- again new to me! This one was marked with a distinct wide band of vibrant orange-red forming a circle through the canvass presented by open fore and hind wings. each forewing also sported a triangle of three white spots on a dark background on the upper outer point. The center region surrounding & including the abdomen was an average, no-frills brown. The critter is about the same size as a Red Admiral California Sister- in other words, it is one of our larger butterflies. Common name: Red Admiral; Scientific name: Vanessa atalanta. In these photos the flutter-by is hanging onto a log along the trail-side, upside down. Notice how the under-wing is so well camouflaged with the bark of the Red Admiral tree on which the critter sits? I noticed the same effect when it was sitting on the creek bank. I’d look at it for a minute, then it would seem to disappear, as it closed its wings, blending in with the sand and pebbles underneath. Adults of this species also fly all year, the species over-winters as adults, and the larval host plant is nettle. So - there’s the “good news” side of stinging nettle’s role in the environment! I noticed lots of White Alder (Alnus rhombifolia) leaves in the creek. Such a cool thing, really. Alder leaves are an important part of the detritus food chain in Stuart Creek. Do you see anything different about these leaves than you see in the leaves of other species found fallen on the trails? I noticed, and then remembered noticing it every year around this time, that the Alder leaves are mostly still very green when they fall. This is NOT nearly so common in other species. Why is that? What’s going on here? Well, there are a couple of things. For one thing, if you think about the adaptation of deciduous trees losing their leaves, you probably remember that in most deciduous plants chlorophyll breaks down and other pigments (carotenoids and xanthophylls) begin to show through and then the leaves often lose even these colors, fading to a dull brown – and sometimes all of these things occur before abscission. The phases of the plant’s preparation for leaf fall include pulling out useful molecules and nutrients from the leaf before the cells holding the leaf to the tree break-down. So why do we still have chlorophyll in Alder leaves? I’ve heard an interesting suggestion that this is a result of the tree having the “luxury” of not needing to be conservative! And, if you think about it, it makes some sense. Alders have their “feet in water” so to speak. and those roots that anchor them in this perennial waterway also house microbes that fix atmospheric nitrogen, providing the tree with a “built-in” supply of “fertilizer”… so two key resources- water and nitrogen- are in plentiful supply. All of this means, of course, that the invertebrates – like caddisfly larvae – that feed on leaf detritus, essentially have home-delivery of nutrient rich food for the taking! And you thought nothing much was happening here in the Fall!! While you’re here, check out the Chain Ferns (Woodwardia fimbriata) on the creek bank.