Bartlett Park, Huntington Beach: Small Stuff

I visited Bartlett Park again the other day. To be honest, it's had better days. Despite the recent rain, the water in there is mostly left over from last year's rain, and it's getting a bit scummy-looking. There's still some water primrose growing in places (at least, I'm pretty sure that's what it is; I have not actually climbed down to look), but the stand of reeds in the deepest area has browned, and the receding water has left a lot of dead vegetation. In addition, the park service has mowed recently, leaving the top of the hill bald and desolate looking.

The local fauna, however, was not complaining. There's still at least one duck living down there (and I've never known a duck to actually be alone, so I'm willing to bet there were others in the reeds). There were dozens of dragonflies, all busily darting around just out of camera range, and I saw a couple of Marine Blues, plus a few other sorts of butterfly and moth I couldn't identify. And, of course, there were lizards, lots of lizards, a shiny black wasp, and at least one bird of prey (Kestral?).

Oh, and crows. Definitely there were crows. Probably the big hawk was around somewhere, too, but I didn't head over to its usual territory.

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.