What We Saw on The Bear Valley to Five Brooks Hike

Here's what Wendy lists as our sightings on the Bear Valley to Five Brooks hike on May 27th:

FLOWERS

Pink: foxglove (also white, non-native), Pacific star flower, honeysuckle (vine)

Red: bee plant, fringe cups

Yellow: tarweed, lotus sp.

White: cow parsnip, milkmaids (still!)

Orange: poppies, scarlet pimpernel (not native)

Purple: blue-eyed grass, wally basket, HARVEST BRODIAEA (somewhat like wally basket but flowers open one at a time), Doulgas iris

OTHER PLANTS

Poison oak getting berries, lots of stinging nettles, red elderberry getting berries though they’re still green

BIRDS:

barn swallows, turkey vultures, California quail WITH BABIES (they're supposed to have 12-16 so that one group must have been two families), chestnut backed chickadee, mallards, dark-eyed juncos, red-tailed hawk, red-winged blackbirds, Brewer’s blackbirds, starling, turkey WITH BABIES, black phoebe, CA towhee, song sparrows, American robins

Heard: olive-sided flycatchers (what PEEVES you), winter wren (long song with circular breathing), warbling vireo (often ends warbler with a question, on an up note), Pacific slope flycatcher (chee-weep), Wilson’s warbler, song sparrow (usually starts with 3 introductory notes), Swainson’s thrush

BUTTERFLIES

Acmon blues (host plants buckwheats and lotuses), Western tiger swallowtail (host plants willows and alders), Lorquin’s admiral (ocean spray and willows), California ringlets, vained white

DRAGONFLIES

CARDINAL MEADOWHAWK (red), MALE WESTERN PONDHAWK (blue, clear wings)

DAMSELFLIES

Dancer sp.

TREES

hazel trees with nuts, BOX ELDER

FUNGI

Red belted conk, artist’s conk (on bay), sunny-side-ups (very odd for May)

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