Nancy Bee
@tangledbank
Northwest Oregon and generally west of the Rocky Mountains, nomadic vandweller when I can, learning for joy, queer, dogs, bugs, plants, vertebrates, geology, climate, soil, sky, weather. Degrees in Horticulture, Soil, and Entomology And bikes always bike
Find the insect! I was on the ground and I didn’t see it until I looked at my photo afterward. The plant is Wallace’s wooly daisy, in the Granite mountains, Mojave desert, California. Those belly flowers are my favorite.
These beautiful crinoid Stem segments. From the Wyoming mountains. The fossil bearing rocks were thin beds in a small badland of soft crumbly rock. I sure would like to understand how that all came to be.
Green-tailed towhee showing that olive yellow green tail (and wing). Mono lake, California
I spent some time painting yesterday. What I see comparing my photo to what I painted is that I need to get bolder about getting more range of tones. The shadows are really missing.
Snakeflies. I know so little except that both larvae and adults are predaceous. What is with those extended thorax segments that make the “neck”
Reminding myself to do an eBird checklist when I get to a new camping spot. When I first got here 12 days ago I saw white headed woodpeckers frequently. I’ve not seen any for a while.
White breasted nuthatches are nesting and feeding young here in the Jeffrey pines.
Chipping sparrows may be raising a second brood. Mammoth lakes, California. The hair is dog hair
Ok better pic. Cassins finch here in the Jeffrey pine forest near Mammoth Lakes California
Out walking forest roads yesterday, we saw two of these caterpillars being consumed by ants. When fully developed, they fall out of the ponderosa trees and dig into the ground to pupate for an entire year! Apparently some get grabbed by ants before they can bury themselves. Gruesome. #nature
I love those desert flowers where the flower is just huge and you have to go looking for the leaves. There are probably good ecological reasons (like apparency) to have a giant flower. The woodyfruit evening primrose. Eastern California.
I saw this some time ago and saved it to help me clarify my thinking on what technology is actually helpful to (human and ) nature thriving vs what is destructive. About a year ago inaturalist posted that they were partnering with Google (the evil one) to bring in generative AI. Big backlash.
I live near a large city park on a river. Most of it was farmed to death for many decades. Still, plants want to move. This is a native Oxalis which popped up on a path I walk daily. I had never seen it before. There is one other iNaturalist observation in the park.
This was my favorite snake encounter. This rattlesnake came from behind me as I was sitting in a beach chair drinking iced tea. Me: leap up. Snake: slowly and calmly continue past my chair.
At the last place I camped (in in the Cascade mountains) the ground squirrels were quite assertive. This one drove my dog nuts running around in the frame of my van. At one point my dog was fixated on the open sliding door and it turned out this squirrel was between the door and the van wall.
I look for Calochortus everywhere because they are always so beautiful. This is C kennedyi Central Arizona.
Oh I want to see it but haven’t found it. There’s a great mural in Ajo where it was filmed.
Last two nights I camped in a campground with water spigots and used that opportunity to wash a lot of things. So there was a lot of water on the ground and that attracted a number of insects. This friend is a Red-winged Wave Moth. Dasyfidonia avuncularia
Me too. Grateful and amazed. The skunky monkeyflower currently blooming in the eastern Sierra. This plant is about 3/4 inch tall.
I still think these are the most spectacular wildflower I’ve seen. Langloisia setosissima -- bristly langloisia, or Lilac sunbonnet. They occur from southern California, western Arizona, and north to central Nevada. #wildflowers
I got this book there- second edition- my favorite book on the geology of the Eastern Sierra, northeast to Ash Meadows and southeast to Tecopa and the Amargosa River.
I found where the nature books are! This is only one bookcase of 5 at the Eastern Sierra Museum in Independence, California. fecm.org/the-museum/ I stop at all the park visitors centers I find to check out their books. The selection here was by far the best of any.
An aggregation of some kind of ground nesting bees. There were several areas along this road. This patch was 100 feet long by 5 feet wide. I estimate 10,000 nests.