catullus's Favorites

At some point I wandered off and returned to the sheet to find everyone ooing and ahhing over these weird... things, stuck to a moth's eyeballs. After wondering if they were entomophagic fungi or something, we settled on pollinia of some kind. I knew about milkweed pollinia, but these didn't look quite right for milkweed, so what else makes pollinia? Orchids, apparently. Assuming these are orchid pollinia, and given the orchids we saw in bloom in the area, I'm guessing these belong to Platanthera, possibly Platanthera dilatata ssp. leucostachys. Ironically, the moth is probably harder to ID. Certainly in Geometridae, but beyond that is a bit of a challenge. Damon or Cat may have gotten better pics, but even with that I wouldn't be able to ID it to species. Here's Cat's observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/124199296

Say Hello to 'Bubba.' This magnificent, adult, male Mohave ground squirrel (MGS; Xerospermophilus mohavensis) was captured and released near Coso Junction, California, on June 6, 2019. It was a bit late in the year to capture an adult MGS, especially one so obviously well fed, above ground. That is because this species not only hibernates through the winter months, but it estivates through the hottest months of the summer; they hibernate or estivate for ~7 months of the year. Sadly, because of the pandemic, I could not return to my field site in 2020 and it does not look very promising either for 2021.

Growing in association with A. tomentosa tomentosa, A. tomentosa bracteosa, A. hookeri hookeri and lots of A. pumila on a narrow strip of undeveloped land near the Monterey Airport. Not really an expected location for this species, but it's clearly been there a long time and it seems like an unlikely spot to plant one.