Another slug

Reticulate tail dropper

A few weeks ago it had rained a bit and, as I sketched a Banana slug (Ariolimax columbianus) devouring the leaves of a Wild cucumber (Marah oreganus) plant, this little fellow ambled across the rock I was sitting on and buried itself in debris that had built up in a crevice in the rock. It was gone before I had a chance to sketch it but I lucked out the next day when I saw a white mushroom glowing in a patch of Poison oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum) and went closer to inspect it. Not only did I find fungi but I found two of these little slugs having a feast. I was able to pick up the mushroom and take it out of the Poison oak and sketch one of the slugs while it ate, then return the mushroom to it's original location with the slugs still attached.

Though slugs don't actually have tails this native species is called Reticulate tail dropper (Prophysaon andersoni) because they're able to self-amputate the back end of their bodies much in the same way that lizards release their tails when captured.

 Learn more about Tail droppers:
Identification Guide to Land snails and Slugs of Western Washington
Wikipedia
Living Landscapes

Slug and Manroot

Banana slug stealthily eating manroot leaves

A few weeks ago we were having unseasonably cold weather and I found myself looking, though unsuccessfully, for Banana slugs (Ariolimax columbianus) as I walked in the cold, gray early mornings. Then it got a bit warmer and rain gave way to blue skies and sun. I gave up on the slugs and went off to look at a Manroot or Wild cucumber plant (Marah oreganus) that I'd been admiring in a somewhat secluded rocky area.

Headed home for the day

I noticed an odd color in the depth of the plant and lo and behold! I'd finally found a banana slug! Wild cucumber produces upright stalks of small white flowers and the deer scat near the slug told me who had eaten nearly every flower off of the plant. As the sun rose higher in the sky the slug began it's journey home. I was thrilled because I've often wondered where these creatures go when the sun is out.
The slug moved slowly, producing enough slime, as it traveled, to help carry it safely over dried leaves, twigs and rocks. I had plenty of time to admire it's moves, contemplate the meaning of life and rearrange my bag. I was even able to plot it's course and identify it's home before it actually arrived at the small cave in the rocks and disappeared slowly into the dark.

A young banana slug

The weather remained cold for several days and I returned a few more times. In all, I found three different banana slugs eating the Manroot leaves at different times. One was quite small (3.5 inches long) and must have been a youngster. The other two were adults and easy to tell apart because one had almost no spots and the other had many.

It'll be a while before I see any of the Banana slugs again. During the dry summers here in Santa Rosa these native creatures estivate (the summer version of hibernate).

Think you know all there is to know about slugs? Think again:
 Slugs: A Guide to the Invasive and Native Fauna of California by Rory McDonnell
 CreationWiki
San Francisco State University Department of Geography
treehugger.com
National Parks Traveler
Birds Amoré

Dressing up to do battle

 

One afternoon, at the end of March, I went looking for one of my favorite spring wildflowers, Marah oreganus, also known as Manroot and Wild cucumber. It sprawls along rocky places and I had recently discovered that it grows wantonly  in a partially quarried rocky area in Howarth Park. As usual, I had trouble figuring out how to draw this long, sprawling plant and was thinking about giving up when I heard a tiny ruckus on the next rock over. I looked up to see two Western fence lizards (Sceloporus occidentalis), in colors I'd never seen before, fighting and posturing with great vigor. I thought there might be a female involved and I soon found her, peering out of a crevasse on a ledge below the action. The males continued to interact with one another for quite a while. Then one of them left, only to return again, and they picked up where they'd left off. A bit later they both went to opposite ends of the slab and rested up for the next round. The female had climbed out of the crevasse and looked a bit exhausted, though she began to recover (from what?) before very long. As the males resumed their battle, a young lizard climbed up the to view the proceedings from the edge of the rock. One of the males chased him away and I watched as he headed my way, only to stop short when he noticed me noticing him. When I once again turned my attention to the territory struggle, the female had climbed up the cliff and was standing next to one of the males. The other male turned around and headed off slowly through the grasses at the edge of the battleground. I watched him until he disappeared and when I looked back at the victor and his mate, I was astonished to find that his brilliant colors and pattern had reverted to a pattern almost identical to her drab brown!

A visit with a snake

One morning at the beginning of September Chloe and I were near the end of an entertaining early walk at Howarth Park. As we wound our way along the last trail before reaching pavement and the parking lot I saw something long and black stretched across the path. I stopped and bent closer to look and was delightfully surprised when the snake, for that's what it was, coiled it's tail and waved it about, revealing a brilliant orange red underside. Amazingly, the snake stayed right where it was and I sat down to spend some time in it's company. If I moved too close (and it had to be really close!) the tail would come up in a tight coil and wave about a few times then remain poised in the air until I retreated. There was a tannish band around the snake's neck, and the jet black upper part of it's body was shiny, as if wet, not what I would have expected from a snake. Chloe and I stayed about a half hour.

Ring-necked snakes (Diadophis punctatus) are found throughout the United States and in parts of Mexico and Canada. Nocturnal and secretive, they're seldom seen during the day. They're mildly venomous but, as I found, not aggressive. The venom may help incapacitate the salamanders, worms, slugs and insects that they like to eat.

Most of the resources I found call this snake  Pacific ring-necked snake (Diadophis punctatus amabilis). However, there seems to be some disagreement as to whether the different subspecies of D. punctatus are really different from one another.

Find out more about these shy snakes:
CaliforniaHerps.com
Wikipedia
wildherps.com
eNature.com

Jackrabbits in the cemetery

I almost never go sketching without Chloe. Even though she sometimes gets bored while I'm working, she always wants to go if I'm going. She seems to enjoy hanging out, at least for a while, and especially enjoys it if there's sun to bask in. One of the best things about walking with her is that she often leads me to the most interesting things to draw! With her fabulous ability to scent, she's led me to some subjects that I never would have found just by looking.

For a time this summer, large groups of songbirds gathered to forage and socialize in some trees in a cemetery near my house. I got up early each morning and walked over, sitting somewhere fairly inconspicuous to wait for them to arrive. They'd come in waves - first the juncos, then house finches, goldfinches, robins and, finally, crows.

One morning, as I waited, sketching Chloe, who is an excellent model when there's nothing else to draw, she grew increasingly excited, inching farther and farther away from where we sat. I was engrossed in my work and didn't really pay as much attention as I should have. Once I'd expanded my focus to the world and looked beyond the now trembling dog to see what had caught her attention so thoroughly, I was delighted to see two Black-tailed jackrabbits (Lepus californicus) resting on a hillside just below the mausoleum, blending amazingly well into the surrounding nearly dry grasses and weeds. They rested quietly for a while then one bounced off over the hill while the other hare did a few leisurely calisthenics, took a dust bath and loped off in the same direction as her companion had traveled.

A life bird at the feeder. Whooee!

This morning I sat in our kitchen to try and decide where I was going to walk when the fog lifted. It was 8:30 and there was no sign of sun so I had plenty of time to decide. I looked up at the bird feeder and noticed what I thought was a very large pigeon on it. When I looked closer I saw that it wasn't a rock pigeon (Columba livia). It was bigger, had yellow feet and a yellow and black beak. There was a very faint white bar on the back of her neck with a few iridescent green feathers underneath, which I would have missed if I didn't know to look for them (after consulting David Sibley's Guide to Birds) I got out some paper and began sketching, thinking she would be leaving sooner than later. As I sketched, I noticed how unhealthy she looked and the way she moved her beak as she ate, as though something was caught in her throat. Not to mention the fact that she stayed at the feeder even though I was only 2 feet (61 cm) away from her. An hour later I stopped to walk to the bank with my dog. Still no sun. When I returned at 11 am the sun was finally beginning to show and several birds were lined up on the phone wire above the bird feeder looking down at the mystery bird, who had fallen asleep, preventing them from getting to their morning meal. I went inside and was pleased to see that she had perked up a bit and ate some more seed before flying off at 11:30. I'd already discovered that she was a Band-tailed Pigeon (Columba fasciata), a native to the western United States. Having never seen one before I wasn't surprised to find that these birds are normally found in coastal woodlands here in northern
California. I'll bet that there's a good story about how she ended up at a feeder in Santa Rosa, a good 35 miles from the coast and I hope that whatever ails her is temporary and that she'll be winging her way south for the winter.

As I wrote this post in the late afternoon my husband came to my studio to tell me that she's back at the feeder so maybe she'll stick around for a while.

More information about Band-tailed pigeons:

All About Birds
Wikepedia
Audubon
Whatbird

Unexpected find

The other morning, after a pleasant walk about Howarth Park, a city park in Santa Rosa CA, I was surprised to come across a turtle laying her eggs in a picnic area a bit of a distance on turtle legs from the lake that's the heart of this park. She had created a patch of mud by digging with her hind legs and, apparently, producing a lot of liquid. She blended well into her surroundings. When I stopped to make some sketches a crowd of humans gathered around, most wondering if she was my pet. I worked quickly and left so that she could go on about her business in private. I added the color later, at home.

If you had a pet turtle when you were a child you might recognize the Red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans), the most popular pet turtle in the world. The one I spotted was a bit bigger than the turtle I had when I was very young, with a shell that was about 10 inches ( 25.4cm) long. In northern California Red-eared sliders, natives of the American southeast, are easily spotted basking on logs and rocks in lakes and ponds, often alongside our only native freshwater turtle, the Western pond turtle (Clemmys marmorata).

If raccoons, rats, humans or other predators don’t disturb the nest which, by the way, is now nearly invisible, the eggs will hatch in 60 to 90 days and the hatchlings will try to make their way to the lake. If they make it that far birds, bullfrogs, fish and humans all threaten their survival.

References:
Wikipedia

Right under my nose

I walk frequently at a city park in Santa Rosa California. There's a lake and a small amusement park but I usually make haste to get away from the crowds and walk on a series of trails that few people, other than cyclists, use. The past few weeks, though, I've been starting my day at the park early, before the crowds arrive, by sitting in a picnic area by the lake. There I've found several California ground squirrels (Spermophilus beecheyi), including some youngsters, living in dens around the edge of the lake. Although the ground squirrels I encounter when I'm out on the trails are very shy, this group is shamelessly brazen! I've seen them eat peanuts out of people's hands and, if I rustle around in my backpack, one or two will come pretty close to see if I'm handing out food, despite the fact that my canine companion watches their every move with barely contained enthusiasm.


Their comfort around humans has given me the opportunity to study their behavior and physique in a fairly concentrated fashion. I can spend an hour sketching and watching because so little frightens them away. I've been amused to see how much their behavior resembles ours. One day I caught one taking a break from foraging for food to blissfully scratch her back on the concrete base of a picnic table.


The youngsters are in constant motion, exploring their new world with enviable enthusiasm. They rough-house with one another, tease their elders and fearlessly try anything. They climb the coyote brush that grows at the edge of the lake, looking for food and dangle acrobatically before tumbling to the ground, only to begin their constant movement once again. The parents watch closely and call them to the den when they perceive danger. Like human parents, they appear to be a bit weary, but mostly tolerant of these wild young things they're raising. Dust baths are extremely popular among all age groups and while the youngsters prefer to careen around the campground, the adults seem to enjoy more sedate activities such as perching on a warm rock and basking in the sun. Sound familiar?

You can find out more about California ground squirrels at:

Wikipedia
The Smithsonian
Natureworks 
eNature

 

Sketching tame wildlife

I'm learning how to sketch wildlife and have discovered that it's much easier to work on my speed sketching skills in places where the wild things aren't so wild. One of my favorite of these places is on Lake Ralphine at Howarth Park, a city park in Santa Rosa, California. There are year-round Canada geese, several varieties of domestic geese, mallards and California ground squirrels. The ground squirrels are extremely brazen. I've seen them go right up to people and beg for peanuts, jumping up on the bench if the person gets distracted and forgets to keep the supply coming. Since I travel with a dog, the squirrels keep their distance from me, yet still come close enough for me to sketch. This one seemed as interested in what I was doing as I was in what she was doing. Which wasn't so much. She stood on the rock and we watched each other for a while and then she was just gone.

I've been working in pen but wanted to try pencil to see if I could get more tone more quickly and, boy, did I! Now I'm having loads of fun with pencil sketching. It's kind of messy and I'd forgotten how much fun that can be. But mostly I'm just thrilled with how much more quickly I can get everything down on paper!

Extraordinary

On Sunday, a beautiful sunny spring day, I set out to walk to Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery, a mere two miles from my house. A block from home I saw a bird at the top of a spruce and whipped out my binoculars to see what it was. I was thrilled to see what I thought was a Bullock's oriole and stopped to do a quick sketch so that I could confirm the identification when I returned home. While sketching I heard a bird making an unfamiliar call over and over. And over. At first I thought it might be the oriole but soon followed the sound across the street. The bird looked very much like a northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos), a very common bird in my area. The thing is, mockingbirds sing other birds' songs, usually belted out in ever-changing medleys, delivered in a style that rivals that of Ethel Merman. Singing one call over and over isn't anything I've noticed one doing before. I sketched it, just in case I was wrong, and as I finished drawing, the mockingbird began to sound like a mockingbird. You can see in the sketch that both birds were quite puffed up. It was cold and the sun was just beginning to warm things up. Mockingbirds eat insects, which were probably waiting for some warmth before starting to buzz about, so I think it was as if that mocking bird just hadn't had that first cup of coffee yet.

Oh, when I got home later and looked up Bullock's oriole (Icterus bullockii), I was surprised to find that I'd most likely seen a Hooded oriole (Icterus cucullatus) instead. Both occur in my area but the Bullock's is more common and that's what I was expecting to see. I was pleased that my drawing helped me sort out the difference!

Strange birds

I walk almost every day at Howarth Park, a city park at the edge of Santa Rosa, California. I escape the more heavily populated trails as soon as I can and walk on trails where there are less humans and more nature, but at the end of every walk I have to take the main paved trail for a few hundred feet to get back to my car in the parking lot. That trail runs along the edge of Lake Ralphine and is usually so full of people, dogs, park vehicles and such, that I try to move along as quickly as I can.

I've certainly noticed the double-crested cormorants that roost in a tree over the water but, until today, I was too anxious to avoid the crowds to really pay attention to them. Since I've been learning to sketch birds I thought the cormorants would be good beginner's birds, since they tend to perch on a branch and just hang
out.

I found a nice little hill to sit on, above the busy trail and sketched for about an hour. As I was getting ready to leave I heard some strange guttural sounds and looked up to see that a lovely white-crested cormorant had landed precariously next to one of the black-crested birds in the tree. The black-crested bird was making the sounds I'd heard. The two birds began to move about in a

decidedly awkward dance -- cormorants aren't very graceful out of the water -- while the black-crested bird continued to vocalize. After a while they moved closer together and rubbed heads and necks together for a while until white-crest flew off, only to return again in a few moments for a bit more dancing, and then off again. White-crest was last seen swimming along with a small group of black-crested birds, while the dance partner in the tree settled back down to some preening and hanging out.
Double-crested cormorants had all but disappeared until the 1970's when DDT and PCB's were banned from use. Now the birds are so numerous that many humans who fish consider them pests.

Here are some interesting articles for further reading about these fascinating birds:

The Cormorant: The Devil Undisguised?; Dr. Tom Kazo, Ph.D. and Donna McVicar Cannon Kazo.
Double-crested Cormorant; Wikipedia.
Great Lakes Fact Sheet; The Rise of the Double-crested Cormorant on the Great Lakes: Winning the War Against Contaminants.

Fungi won't be around much longer

I've been enjoying seeing all of the lovely images of birds but thought I'd mix things up a bit with a little sketch I did of Helvella acetabulum, one of our spring fungi. The end of our fungi season is fast approaching. It's so very short! This fungus is currently fruiting in several parts of Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery, a lovely place with many old Coast live oaks (Quercus agrifolia), a tree these fungi seem to get along with very well. Spores puffed out in a light cloud as the air moved around the fungus. The veins are a lighter color than the cup but the sun was shining into the cup, making the cup walls translucent and the heavier veins opaque.

Looking for earth tongues

Every year, at about this time, I find earth tongues, quaint, tiny fungi that look like...well...tongues sticking out of the earth. This year I accidentally noticed that they were fruiting in a location other than the one I normally found them in. Which got me to wondering how common they really are. So, for about two weeks, I walked slow as a snail with my nose to the ground, looking for earth tongues. They are, indeed, quite common in some of the wooded areas, at least at Howarth Park. Aside from the two species I usually find, I got my first glimpse of a gorgeous green species when I found a few fruiting with some of the more familiar black ones. The drawing above is of Geoglossum sp. Without microscopic work, it's difficult to identify the Geoglossums to species.

One day I was admiring a Geoglossum that I found in a new location when I noticed a stick covered with little cup fungi, which are even harder to find (in my experience) than earth tongues. The largest one was only 9mm across. These cups are most likely Plectania sp. and, as you may have already guessed, fruit on wood.



Here's a link to a more detailed article about earth tongues.

Mushroom for brunch

It was supposed to rain early this morning but I took my chances and headed for Howarth Park to see what I could see. Luckily, and not surprisingly, the weather forecasters were wrong and there was only a little bit of drizzle here and there, not even enough to make the paper wet. Toward the end of my walk I found this mushroom, Agrocybe praecox, one of the harbingers of spring in these parts. I used the compact mirror, that I carry for just this application, to examine the underside of the mushroom and confirm my tentative identification. When I saw the slug munching away I knew that I had to get a quick sketch. I drew the slug first and was glad I did as it left soon after I got there.

Learning to sketch birds

I've been just awed by Laureline's sketches of the birds in her yard and thought I'd add some of mine. I've been trying to sketch the birds at our feeder a little bit every day, so I have several pages of bird sketches now. I'm actually feeling a bit more confident sketching quickly and finding it easier than when I began a few weeks ago. It's affected my other sketching, too, which is a pleasant surprise!

I really wasn't paying much attention to our feeder birds before sketching them and have gotten to know them a bit better in the time that I've been at it. I've discovered that the nervous, chatty, bossy house finches are the most numerous but we have quite a few other visitors, including White and Gold crowned sparrows, who mostly hug the ground, but occasionally will jump up on the platform feeder. The California towhees are quite brazen and don't seem as disturbed by my staring presence on the other side of the glass. In fact, they stare back while they eat! Oregon juncos move faster than the speed of light, it seems, and the Mourning doves are true Californians, very mellow and easy going.

I look forward to my bird sketching sessions and find myself listening for the house finch's chatter as I work on other tasks around my house. When they call, I come running whenever I can.

Helvella

Helvella lacunosa are a fairly common fungus in northern California that seem to fruit longer than most. The fruiting bodies are quite sturdy and persist for a good long while. I'm told that they fruit with conifers but I find them mostly in association with one of our native trees, coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia). Helvella don't have gills or pores. Rather, they produce their spores on the upper surface of the wrinkly cap.

I had collected several of these, with caps in various shades of gray and black, planning to do several watercolor sketches. They languished in the refrigerator for over a week and today, when I finally got around to sketching, they were rather old and funky. Every time I moved one, or opened the container, spores swirled up, up and about the room. It was sort of like a dust storm. Blggghhh! They're still fruiting so tomorrow I'll try to find some that are a bit fresher.  Apparently they're edible. I've seen several suggestions of ways to cook and eat them while reading about fungi online lately. Not that I'm going to eat them myself! But I did lay them to rest in my backyard. We have a valley oak (Quercus lobata), which is a poor mushroom host, but maybe I'll get some to fruit in my yard next season! My very own helvella garden! How cool would that be? Oh, the sketch of the black capped fungus was done with ball point pen and the color sketch was done in ball point and watercolor.

A decaying log hosting a lot of fungi

These fungi are fruiting on an old log in a little dell that I like to visit in Howarth Park, a beautiful city park in Santa Rosa CA, with some lovely trails meandering through mixed woods. Mixed woods mean more mushrooms because fungi and trees form relationships that are beneficial to each and the more types of trees, the more fungi. I would have had to draw a much bigger picture to fit all of the fungi that were actually on this log, but I focused on the lacy white entity on the left of the picture. It's called Hericium abietis and is one of the tooth fungi.

The mushrooms to the right of the Hericium abietis are Mycena haematopus, identifiable by a stalk that "bleeds" red juice when cut or pinched.

Finally, the black lumps behind the Hericium abietis are called Annulohypoxylon thouarsianum with a common name of cramp balls, presumably after someone tried to eat them? They're very common and persist even in dry weather so are especially easy to find.

The reason all of these fungi are on this log is because they're all wood-rotters, the under appreciated composters of our forests. It's interesting to watch a log as it decomposes because different fungi appear at different stages of decomposition.

Fungal baseball bat...with a few wrinkles

Not surprisingly, this fungus is called a club fungus. Although it doesn't have gills it still reproduces by releasing spores and is closely related to mushrooms. Clavariadelphus occidentalis is a western fungus. It's believed to be mycorrhizal, or to have a symbiotic relationship, with conifers. I find it fruiting with Douglas fir, although there are also always oaks around, as well. There's an eastern (Clavaridelphus pistillaris) version which appears to fruit with Beech.

I had hoped to include a drawing showing a club in it's habitat but they seem to have all disappeared or become saggy old things, so this will have to do for now.

I usually find these alone or in small groups of three or four. Once I found a large crowd of them, looking like a small army standing in the woods.

Two websites that have more information about this fungus are Mykoweb and MushroomExpert and there are some wonderful images at MushroomObserver.

One of my favorite mushrooms

These pretty little mushrooms appear around Christmas here in northern California and are called Marasmius plicatulus. One rainy December I saw a huge troop of hundreds or more, all in one place. Mostly, where I walk, they appear in smaller groups and you have to look very carefully to find them because they blend so well with the leaves. I drew some a week ago in black and white because I love working in black and white, but I wanted to try to capture the lovely colors, so today I made a little watercolor sketch. It was very cold and I kept waiting for the sun to come out and make it warmer. I finally gave up and packed my things to go home and finish up. As I walked out of the park, the sky cleared.

Meet the correspondents - Debbie Drechsler

I've enjoyed following this blog for a while now and feel very honored to be a part of it. Thank you, Cathy, for the invitation!

I've been drawing pictures for as long as I can remember. While I'm working on a drawing or painting everything that's troubling me slips away and I live, for a time, in a perfect world. Consequently I had no choice but to figure out how to make a living drawing pictures! I've worked as an editorial illustrator for over twenty years, drawing pictures for magazines, newspapers, and books. In 1996 I began to work digitally. Although I love drawing on the computer I found that I missed paper and pens and paint and all the mess and uncertainty that go along with that. I also found myself yearning to spend more time outdoors. Even though nature seemed to find it's way into many of my illustrations, I'd never really made the connection between going out and actually drawing in nature until I noticed some mushrooms one winter day in the woods. At first, I took photographs of all the mushrooms I found. Then I began to draw from the photographs, but it wasn't quite as satisfying as I'd hoped. That's when the light bulb went off in my head and I realized I could go outside and, well, draw the mushrooms right where they were! Or bring them home and draw them. Wow! What a revelation! I've been drawing outside or bringing some of the outside in to draw ever since. It's humbling and rather exciting to discover how much I didn't know about making pictures. I'm enjoying being a student again and looking forward to being one for a good long time!

I walk every morning and I try to sketch something on every walk. I have just a few places I go to and am always amazed at how fresh and new they look, now that I make sketches of them. I'm rarely bored on a walk and find that the most ordinary things become exciting and exotic when I give them the attention needed to make even the quickest, simplest sketch. Each day is a new adventure, filled with discoveries and mysteries to solve.