The first picture is of a beetle that we captured on the sidewalk outside of our building well after dark last Saturday evening. Perhaps it had been attracted by the lights of the building.

I am calling it a Ground Beetle but I do not know the species. I have submitted a photograph to E-Fauna in hopes that it will be reviewed and the species identified.

The rest of the attached pictures were taken on Monday, May 16, when Herb and I checked the bluebird nest boxes on Goats Peak. 

We saw no bluebirds but there was a pair of small brown birds in the vicinity of one of the boxes, probably wrens, as there was a nest in that box--composed mainly of stiff dry twigs, with one twig extended out through the box entrance hole. There were a few rather poor pictures of what appeared to be wrens stored on the but the camera does not have high enough definition to give clear pictures of very small birds like wrens. It seems that our bluebird project is a failure this year. For next year we will hope to find a location for the boxes that will be more easily accessible. Time takes its toll of our ability to climb about in steep areas.

We always enjoy the seasonal succession of flowering plants and this time there were several that I had not yet got pictures of this year. 

There were these flowering Brown-eyed Susans, an abundance of Yarrow blossoms and the occasional Stonecrop. 

Yarrow    (My photo of the entire plant, showing its fern-like leaves did not turn out well.)

I am not sure of the species but I think that this plant is the Worm-leaved Stonecrop. It was growing on an eroding clay bank at the side of an old woods road.

Redstem Ceanothis

For a time the old burn was a mass of white Redstem Ceanothus blossoms but now the blossoms are mostly gone, replaced by masses of reddish seed capsules. I have read that these capsules are explosive and that most of the shiny brown seeds that will be scattered all over the burned areas will lie dormant until the next fire. This shrub returns in abundance after fires hot enough to expose the mineral soil and it remains vigorous when fires return at intervals of 10 to 15 years, producing ideal foraging for mule deer.

The common shrub Snowberry is now in bloom. One has to look closely to really appreciate its delicate pinkish-white bell-shaped blossoms. Later the blossoms will be replaced by white berries.

Wild strawberries are ripe! This photo was taken in the grassy field just below the burned forest.








I am intrigued by the galls (abnormal thickenings) on the stems of Rabbit-brush. It has been suggested that they are caused by a certain fly which lays its eggs on the plant and the hatched larvae feed within this protected swelling on the stem, eventually pupating before emerging as the adult fly.

Rabbit-brush