January 20, 2021 Malibu Bluffs Park & Legacy Park

The winter doldrums are upon us and the never ending hot dry weather is making explorations more challenging. If you don't go to an area with a water source, finding wildlife other than a few expected species is difficult. At this time of year finding anything other than birds and dried up vegetation is a lot of work. I find myself spending a lot of time looking for interesting new species and coming up empty frequently.

Yesterday I went out to Malibu Bluffs Park and Legacy Park. I hadn't been to Malibu Bluffs in two months. I was interested to see how the burned area was recovering since my last visit. The natural area certainly looked better than expected with some new plant growth and spots of green--mostly non-native grasses that were popping up all over, probably as a result of our one inch of rain in December.

The burned area definitely is seeing new growth. Several laurel sumac bushes that burned have re-sprouted nicely. I was also able to find a cool new bug, a Nyctoporis carinata, underneath some wood. It kind of reminds me a tiny bit of an ironclad beetle. A couple of milkweed plants also had new growth but overall, the burn area did not look as good as I had hoped. I'm sure our lack of rain has impacted that.

I went on to Legacy Park and the pond was full; however I didn't see a whole lot of birds like I did late last year. What was nice to see was that a volunteer was there planting several new natives and it appears that there are many new plants in the park that were planted recently. Hopefully that will help to draw new birds in during spring migration. And I did find some very robust willow apple sawfly galls on one of the trees in addition to a few other insects. Having native plants and water is definitely the key to supporting wildlife.

Posted on January 21, 2021 05:15 PM by