Treasure Hunt

I haven't really been able to get up to Berkeley in the last couple of weeks. My grandfather died and my mom has taken it really hard. She's pretty fragile and ended up getting sick the next day. I'm the oldest child so I stayed home a lot to keep her company and make sure she was doing ok. What that meant for this assignment was that I couldn't track down the observations required, at least not in Berkeley. And there weren't any observations on iNaturalist in San Jose or Morgan Hill that I could hunt down to complete the assignment with.

So, I found a sort of middle ground. I'm trying to match up observations I've already taken with observations made last year in the Berkeley area. Some of these observations are from my South Bay explorations. Hopefully, I can come up with a handful. I also managed to make a few observations today after class.

Also, I found a little treasure of my own a week or so ago. I was digging a tiny grave for a dead bird I found in the backyard when I came across a cocoon. I made an observation and put it on iNat and the consensus was that it was either a moth or butterfly. I wasn't satisfied with that identification and had my own fantasies about reliving the elementary school glory days of watching caterpillars become butterflies. I turned to Google to figure out my next moves and ended up placing the cocoon into a glass jar with small holes poked into the top. Then I waited. And waited. And -- you guessed it -- waited some more. The day before yesterday I was disappointed to find that my once shiny, chestnut colored cocoon had turned black. I was sure that whatever was inside it had died. I told myself that I would deal with its disposal the next day. Imagine my surprise when the following day I found the blackened cocoon empty and a moth flitting around the jar instead! I felt like a kid again. Today I set the moth free, but not before taking half a dozen pictures of it.

Posted on May 7, 2014 06:55 AM by turmiyah