February 4, 2021 Nicholas Flat

Our dry winter is discouraging but the small amount of rain we got a week or so ago helped out some. Today I visited Nicholas Flat for the first time in quite some time. As always it was pleasant, although when I arrived around 9:45 there were four other cars there. It turned out two belonged to some people working on the vegetation and they left shortly after I arrived. Another woman went running by me with her dog soon after I arrived.

About 25 minutes into my visit, a park ranger showed up. First time I've seen one here and always a welcome sight. He saw the woman with the dog approaching--she was on her way back and he stopped her and told dogs are not allowed in the park. He said they are getting ready to put up some new signs. I was glad that they are enforcing this though I don't think this area is the worst by any means.

It was a mixed bag in terms of observations. It was very, very quiet. I didn't see or hear a lot of wildlife so that was sad; however there were definitely more insects around and many of the plants look like they are getting fresh leaves. Canyon sunflower, hummingbird sage and chaparral bush mallow look like those that should be getting some flowers in the next month or so. If we don't get much more rain I'm not anticipating much in the way of flowers though there were many chaparral currant plants with flowers.

The best finds of the day were a greater yellowlegs, a green lynx spider (one of my faves) and a possible cherry plum mining bee that I observed working on digging its chamber.

One of the things I've really been noticing as I travel around is the almost total lack of fungi. Normally this time of year is the best for finding cool mushrooms; however the lack of rain has really made this a challenge and I have noticed that the few observations of fungi posted for Los Angeles County tend to be in the local mountains.

Posted on February 5, 2021 01:43 AM by naturephotosuze