Saving our wildlife; saving ourselves

When I returned home from an early morning walk, it was still cool, and I got the urge to start cleaning up the "leftovers" from processing the firewood delivered in June.  I thought it was time to replace the chopping block I've used for three years.  When I tipped it over, I saw a pathetic little blob squirming in the sawdust and chips (above).  In the shade and covered with these particles, I had to quickly review in my mind al the possibilities before picking it up.

Turns out it was a seriously dehydrated Chorus Frog, formerly known as Hyla regilla but now known as Pseudacris regilla. the Pacific Chorus Frog.  What to do? When I looked this creature in the eye, I felt I needed to save it.  But what did that mean?  The odds of its surviving the summer were next to zero, even if I had not tipped over the chopping block.  The odds of surviving a winter were even closer to zero.  Yet, the urge to save it was there, and remains.

As the sawdust and wood chips gradually fell away, and he/she didn't attempt to jump out of my hand, the eye contact made me reminisce on the hundreds, of not thousands, of encounters I've had with this species when it was healthy and enjoying Spring, like the one below I photographed in May.  May 27, to be precise. 

My scientific knowledge and the logical (mostly) mind I have said that every female lays literally thousands of eggs per season, and if more than two of those survive the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, we would be overwhelmed with frogs in a short time. This scenario is obviously impossible for any reasons.  So why did I entertain the idea of saving this one frog?  I found a damp place nearby, a place that had some possibility of remaining damp until the fall rains began and this frog would have a change to bury deeper in moist soil that might not freeze over the winter.  Very poor odds, but relating to the frog in this way is how I save myself.

"You can observe a lot by watching."

My afternoon wandering along Golden Eagle Avenue by the college got me to thinking about photos I used to make into greeting cards and post cards.  What makes a scene post-card-worthy?  I guess it depends on who's buying.  While I was consciously on the lookout for insects and spiders, the first thing that gave me the urge to take a picture was a patch of Teasel.  I have always loved this plant.  Covered with thorns, ot has often painfully interrupted my pursuit of an insect photograph.  But, in the end, the architecture of the whole plant, but especially its flowers, has won me over.  Technically, it's a weed.  But so am I, having moved from my native Massachusetts to contribute to California's overpopulation. 

Moving closer to the Teasel, I became conscious of the background, should I choose to take another photo.  Sometimes the sky around here is incredibly blue.  Today it seemed especially so in contrast to the haze left by fires just a few days earlier.

The patterns in which the flowers bloom is also intriguing.  Note the ring of purple flowers around the "waist" of the cluster.  Sometimes a ring or two will bloom near the top, or near the bottom, one at each extreme.  Sometimes the entire cluster will be blooming.  I can't help but wonder about the biochemical and/or environmental triggers that produce these results.  Maybe I've been n the sun too long.

After musing on the life of Teasel a while, I started looking at the ground again, as I'm known to do.  Looking at the ground is always more interesting than looking at the screen on m phone.  How  people can spend the better part of each day looking at a phone is beyond me. 
Hidden below the tops of the dried grass was an attractive spread of blooming Orchard Morning Glory, known by people who don't like it as Bindweed. I experimented with composition.

This vertical format appealed to me most.  That led my busy mind to other musings - such as why must photos and most flat art be in rectangular format.  There are some cultures in Africa who still do not recognize rectangles as being special among geometric shapes.  Seems like our entire modern culture has been controlled by things on the right - not just right angles.

I stared at quite a few individual blossoms of St. John's Wort, hoping to find a Crab Spider in its yellow phase.  All the ones I've photographed this season have been white.  I started to get hypnotized by all the overlapping petals of yellow, so stepped back to get one last photo of "the big picture."

No, not quite.

Ah, there it is.  Maybe my next photo greeting card.  Projected sales?  7, to friends and relatives.

Testing the concept "weed"

 When a "weed" is liked, is it still a weed?  Here we have Self-heal - a mint - and Poison Hemlock. More on this subject later.

One season fading, but another will follow

 One patch of daisies that I watch almost daily is coming to the end of its season - at least the season for daisies.  Petals are wilting and dropping, entire plants and keeling over, and there is much less insect activity.  However, this morning I did manage to spot the above (and below) crab spider getting ready for another day of food flying into its grasp.  There also appears to be a part of one of this little TP's they seem to make for hiding during the night.

 Even with the petals drooping, the remaining disk of flowers seemed photogenic to me.

I look forward to the next points of interest in this stretch.  The Pine Drops, Stickseed, and Horsetails are all looking pretty good, and in their maturation over the next month I'm sure I'll find items of interest.

Appendix

 No, not the digestive gland attached to the colon, but in the sense of afterthoughts or supplemental material placed at the end of a book. These are two from the last week of June taken near Oakland Camp.  I already posted a more distant view of the Plume Moths mating (above) on June 29, but I am still intrigued by having found them under a cluster of Narrow-leaf Milkweed blossoms that I thought a closer look was warranted.  Click on the photo to get even closer.

The small patch of Fireweed that blooms at the edge of the road into Oakland Camp always intrigues me because it's the only patch of this flower I've seen in American Valley (Quincy area), and I first discovered this flower at 6000+ feet elevation In Lassen National Park.  Surprised to see it at 3500 feet.  Beautiful, tall plant with many blossoms.

Like the toy in CrackerJacks, only better

 While wandering through the milkweeds last Friday, I was not seeing much insect life on top of the flower clusters.  I was hoping to find the Red Milkweed Beetle, and eventually did find just one. See earlier posts.  So, hoping to come up with something of interest, I took to tipping each flower cluster over to see if there was anything going on in the shade.  Voila!  A pair of Small Milkweed Bugs, Lygaeus kalmii, mating.  The above photo is more or less the view I head when my eyes were about two feet away.  I zoomed in on my computer and got the photo below.  A little fuzzy.  In a situation like this, my iPhone doesn't know quite where to focus, and I can't quite see well enough to control it.  Pretty neat bugs, though.

Butterflies getting results, too.

 For several weeks I've been seeing lots of Western Swallowtail butterflies racing around overhead in my front yard, often in pairs.  Today, as I was cutting Choke Cherry branches away from our back deck for fire safety, I came across this beautiful caterpillar.  Now I know what those butterflies were up to.