Fiery Skipper in Huntington Beach Central Park

 
 

A fiery skipper, Hylephila phyleus, resting on the leaves. I still need to work out where and how skippers fit in in relation to butterflies and moths.

Identification comes from my usual source (bugguide).

Fungi

These are growing inside a living tree in Huntington Beach Central Park.

I think that they are glistening ink caps, but that is based on Google image searching. I have no plans to try tasting them on that ground.

 
 
 

Hummingbird in Huntington Beach Central Park

American Bittern in Huntington Beach Central Park

I'm pretty sure this is an American Bittern. I'm afraid I startled it a bit at ifrst, but it went back to fishing pretty quickly. Or maybe that should be frogging? I think most of what's in the rather temperamental lake is frog and toad spawn, not fish as such.

Passionflower in Huntington Beach Central Park

Just Because

This is still attracting attention and tributes.

Talbert Lake Again

Oh yes, I do love having Talbert Lake around and intact. 

Twelfth Night in Huntington Beach Central Park

I am looking forward to this. The actors have been practicing for several days now, so some of my photography has been to the sound of Sir Toby Belch repeatedly roaring "What a plague means my niece, to take the death of her brother thus?" and the like. I can never hear the reply from where I'm standing by the lake. Clearly, I'll have to pay to attend to see it properly.

Take a close look at that book, while you're at it.

The Broken Hourglass: Game Over

I promised to tell you when I had more news about The Broken Hourglass, so here I am.

I wish it were better news. As you can probably tell by the title, or may already have read in the official announcement on the Planewalker Games website, it's, well, broken. Jason Compton and Wes Weimer (owners of said property) have decided for a variety of reasons not to continue developing The Broken Hourglass.

They plan to let folks play around with it at some point, or, to put it in the official announcement's more formal terms, to:

release the game materials for TBH and the underlying WeiNGINE game code in some open source/open content license model which will permit the ongoing exploration and development of the game as a non-commercial, community project. The exact licenses and scope of this public release have not yet been determined, and there is no specific timetable for this public release to happen. The intention will be to give the greater community the best chance possible to explore the potential of TBH and to honor the efforts of the dozens of people who have been involved with TBH's development over the years.

So this is goodbye, at least as far as The Broken Hourglass is concerned. I’m going to miss the crazy characters, the writing, the brainstorming, and the blogging (Actually, I’m not quitting blogging, just blogging about The Broken Hourglass). So, goodbye gamers. Thanks for reading and for all your encouraging comments and questions throughout the process.

Unexpected Comapny

I found myself with some unexpected company while reading. She wandered across the page and then went off on her own business.

Bugs in Huntington Beach Central Park

The grass in the park was swarming with bugs. There were hundreds of tiny little green bugs hopping and flying, thousands of gnats, and a seemingly endless stream of wolf spiders following them.

A small brown bug perched on the grass. I had thought it was a grasshoppery type, but a closer look and a post on bugguide.net marks it as, probably, a marsh fly, sepedon.

The wolf spiders would probably be pretty happy to catch a few of these as well. This one is resting on the grass growing in the boggy part of Talbert Lake.

A damselfly happily resting beside one of the streamlets. I was so excited to be able to actually get a picture of it. It's so small and clear that I had a hard time getting the camera to focus on it.

My usual bugguide questioning and looking says it's probably a Pacific Forktail (Ischnura cervula).

You know, the more I work on learning names, the more I realize why people use the Latin names. It's not snobbery; it's because there are so many bugs that share common names. At the same time, it would be so much easier to learn just one name! And don't get me started on the way "they" keep changing their minds about various species! (Right. Rabbit trail. Back to my bugs of the day).

And last but not least, a crane fly, a bug I know as the "mosquito eater," though probably it doesn't eat mosquitoes at all.

Ducklings

I thought the duckling season was well and truly over. Shows what I know!

Then again, given the disappearing act they pulled, there could be any number of ducklings in the park, and I would never know.

Going.

Going.

Gone.

Authoralerts.com--a way to find new books by authors you like

Just lately, I've been using AuthorAlerts, a site very useful for tracking upcoming releases by authors. It pretty much relies on Amazon (Remember when Amazon would do this?), so sometimes a it'll notify me that a new book is coming out, and I'll get all excited only to find that it is a new edition of a book, but still, it is nice to have. They'll limit you to ten initially, but up it to on hundred if you tell others (I already have my hundred. I'm now posting out of purely altruistic "Hey this is neat" motives (not that I wouldn't have posted here for another 90 authors. I just don't need to)). Edit Sept 30, 2011: And I logged in today to find a brief notice "We apologize, but the Author Alerts website is no longer operating." I visited more on the nature of every couple of weeks than every day, so I'm not sure when it went down, but it's down. Anyone got any other ideas for places that will do this? Amazon used to, but for some strange reason, they stopped quite a while ago.

Butterflies

The butterflies are enjoying the Huntington Beach Central Park. I think all the water helps, too.

Gulf fritillaries enjoying the afternoon sun.

A red admiral rests in the light.

Hungry Bug

Two unexpected sights in one afternoon: A tomato plant sprung up by the side of a water-filled ditch in Huntington Beach Central Park and a large green grasshopper sitting comfortably in the leaves.

Hungry Birds

The birds in the Huntington Beach Central Park were hungry, too busy eating to worry about mere photographers wandering by.

This hungry goldfinch was right next to the path, busy happily dissecting thistle.

There he is, way down there, quite dwarfed by the plant he's on.

 

The spice finches were among many birds enjoying the ripening grass seed.

Dragonflies in Huntington Beach Central Park

There was plenty of water left in Talbert Lake and also in the side ditches/streams/whatever you want to call them.

Perfect Dragonfly Habitat.

This makes for perfect dragonfly territory, and they were out in force, flying, flirting, and mating. They're beautiful, too, with that blue and brown mosaic pattern down the back.

Six Foot Flamingo

I have a soft spot for those pink flamingos peoples put on their lawns.

A six foot flamingo peering down from a shop front is even better.

Sadly, the shop wasn't open, and I didn't think to get the name. Some other day, perhaps.

Guaranteed to Scare Pigeons Away Forever!

 

Or not, as the case may be.

Kizuri

Kizuri (remember her? The blog interrupting bird?) is doing beautifully!

She's still inclined to try to dodge sitting on my hand, jumping up to my shoulder as soon as she can, but she seems to enjoy sitting on my shoulder. I do need to work with her on the hand matter more, but for now, I'm glad she'll at least take food that is held out to her, and if she jumps off my shoulder and heads to the ground, she'll hop back up to my finger.

She is expanding her interests, having discovered she likes music (especially opera and Gregorian Chant, both of which she will sing to), sitting in the sun and burbling, and climbing the curtains behind her cage.

I'd sort of hoped that the seeds vs. bird pellet debate would be settled by this point, but it is still hotly debated. At least, it's hotly debated online. Kizuri has no doubts whatsoever. She eats most kinds of seed but dumps vegetable dyed, nutritional pellets out of her dish as soon as she sees them. Other foods she'll at least play with, but not those!

She does like bacon--a lot. She can't have much, but she loves it. She's also fond of apples and bread (partly because she can make an unholy mess with the crumbs). Asparagus was a big hit. Carrots, not so much. She'll nibble them, but that's about it. Strangely, peaches don't interest her.

Sharp Shinned Hawk

This hawk was puzzling me. It spent last week flying around the neighborhood and calling and calling--far too much to be hunting. Finally, I got a picture and asked on the NatureNet forums (I do like having a whole world full of people to ask questions of!)

Turns out it is most likely a sharp shinned hawk (I'd have guessed a peragrine, but then, I didn't even know there was such a thing as a sharp shinned hawk) that had recently left the nest and was begging its parents for food.

It seems to have widened its range now a bit, and to be calling less, so maybe it has figured out how to do its own hunting.

The nature-netter who answered my question also sent a nifty link to a page on sharp shinned hawks. Seems most of the birds I've thought were peregrines were probably either sharp shinned or Coopers, since peregrines are aerial hunters and thus unlikely to find swooping down from telephone poles a practical way to hunt.

Who knew?

One of these days, I hope to have some of the answers, myself, but since I decided to start looking at what was happening around me in nature, in the city, I've been inundated (bugs, birds, plants, more bugs...). So, for now, I'm very, very happy that there are people out there willing to answer questions and explain matters.


Edit: I inserted the link on Sharp Shinned hawks this time!

Dragonfly

This beauty came and sat on my aloe out front for a long time.

Owl Birdhouse

Why do I think any baby bird raised here will be severely traumatized? It is kind of cute, though, from a human perspective.

Library Herons, or why I should ALWAYS carry my camera, even when it isn't practical

So, today it was not practical to carry the camera full time the way I usually do. It just wasn't.

So I didn't.

And when I stopped by the library, there was a young heron, standing in the edging, looking a bit dazed, in perfect photo position--peering around a cactus, to be precise.

Later, he was over standing on someone's wall, trying to figure out whether or not he could reach the roof. Again, a beautiful photo op, and I had no camera!

Apparently, they're still figuring out how to fly, so they pretty regularly land in front yards or in library edgings.

Oh--and the woman who had complained about all the noise the nestlings were making? It was her yard, and she was delightedly calling her husband out to look.

I knew she was protesting too much!

And I'm simply going to have to figure out how to carry my camera tomorrow.

I won't be near those herons, but something else might happen. You never know.

Polistes Exclamans Wasp

I never used to give much though to wasps. They were just there, on the periphery, somewhat unpleasant summer facts, to be avoided when possible.

Then I spent one summer sitting on the front swing watching them and realized that they are beautiful. They fly with long, slender, graceful shapes dancing through the air.

And they are full of unexpected variety and beauty. Look at this one, for example. She's not the "classic" black and yellow. She's gold and honey.

Just to be clear, though: I'm still steering away from those stings!

Keeping Marigolds Safe

I have these marigolds high up on a shelf to keep them out of reach of snails. So far, it's worked: The snails haven't eaten them.