Tanoaks at El Corte de Madera 2011

Despite overcast sky and relatively cold temps for summer, I decided to check out the tanoaks at El Corte de Madera on Monday (8/7/11). It was foggy driving along Skyline, but some sun started to break out as I neared the preserve.Once I got past the kiosk, I decided not to wear my jacket as it was warm enough in the sun.

It was 11:00 when I started off. I headed directly to our tree about 1.5 miles to the right. Along the way, spider webs glistened with fog drip, and I could hear drips hit the leaf duff. A few birds gave voice, but there wasn’t much insect action. And, except for an Agelenid and the numerous Sierra dome (Neriene) webs, I didn’t notice any arachnids.

Downhill past the nettle corner, I stopped to look at the underside of a tree on the trailbank. I noticed something odd–three tiny insects hanging from a silken thread. Then I noticed two more, near one end of the 2′ thread. It looked like tiny bug laundry, hanging out to dry! Later, I learned that these are Gall Midges (Cecidomyiidae), and certain ones like to hang on spider silk. Who knows why. I’ve found mention of this or photos of this behavior in various countries including France, China, and South America.

Gall Midges (Cecidomyiidae) hanging from a spider thread

Gall Midge

Like my previous visit, the 1.5 mile tanoak was in shade. There was one lower branch that had some catkins, but there were no obvious insects visiting. There was a tiny spider in a web, and upon shaking with the net, a lacewing larva fell out. There are larger 2 cm. acorns as well as younger ones. The smaller tanoak across from that one had low catkins. I didn’t see insects there either, despite that branch being in the sun, but when I looked at my photos, I saw another tiny spider as well as a small insect, possibly a beetle, on a catkin. These catkins still had their stamens, but just a little pollen left.

Birds calling: California Quail, Dark-eyed Junco, Spotted Towhee, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Steller’s Jay, Band-tailed Pigeon, Pygmy Nuthatch, and Allen’s? (or some other Selasphorus) Hummingbird.

Insects out: lots of Sierra dome webs, a few native bees in the lower meadow at yellow composites, two bumble bees on the way out, many grasshoppers, and a few butterflies (California sister or Lorquin’s admiral, blues/hairstreaks, skipper, swallowtail) and dragonflies flying around. I did find a triangle web spider, Hyptiotes, which we had been searching for here in the redwoods. There were a few small wasps searching for prey in the leaf litter under the small tanoak. One had blue markings.

And, one August banana slug found a moist place to hang out.

On the way out, I stopped to look at the Helleborine orchids in bloom. Also in bloom were sticky monkeyflower, a large patch of Clarkia, a few buttercups, and forget-me-nots. By then it was warm enough in the sun for the smell of yerba santa to permeate the air. My small thermometer said ~68F. I got back to the trailhead at 2:00.

Here are photos. The tanoaks are first, then insects and other things.

Tanoaks 2011

On 6/22/11, JO and I checked out the progress of the tanoaks at El Corte de Madera. For this years’ study we will try to collect some pollinators for ID, not for quantity. I brought a 45ml plastic tube. I put it in a ziplock bag, but at some point it leaked. I didn’t collect anything since there weren’t any insects at the one tree we’ve had a lot of activity at later in the year.

It was pretty warm (forgot to look at the temp but weather.com TruPoint said 75–may have been higher).

There was one tree to the left from the entrance (Gordon Mill) that had new foliage, and to the right one with catkins at the top (way up). We don’t remember if there was a dead one to the right last time, down near the tree that we observed the most before, but there is now. And that tree that we observed the most last time, about a mile in before a small meadow, has a few dead leaves, and had no obvious insect visitors. It was mostly shaded around 2:00.There are old dark brown catkins, and some green female flowers around .25″ and larger, and I think there are a few catkins at the top.

Birds calling: Hutton’s Vireo, Dark-eyed Junco, Black-throated Gray Warbler (I think), Wilson’s Warbler, Spotted Towhee, Brown Creeper, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Steller’s Jay, Warbling Vireo, Band-tailed Pigeon, and a distant thrush.

Insects out: lots of spiders, some bees, flies, beetles, grasshoppers, and a few butterflies and dragonflies flying around.

We saw two garter snakes. One was dark gray with a yellow stripe and slithered into the grass before I could get a photo, and the other was more colorful. It slid into an insect net by itself. After taking some photos for ID, we quickly let it go.

Here are photos. The tanoaks are first, then insects and other things.

Tanoaks 2010

On 7/30/10, JO and I checked out El Corte de Madera’s trees to see if we could find last year’s female flowers. I wish we’d marked them somehow last year. None of the trees on this trip had an obvious odor away from the tree.
We first turned left and went about half a mile. We checked two trees on the right. The first had a few catkins with pollen. A couple of ants roamed around. The second tree, near the first, had small, 1.5cm acorns-in-progress.
We went to where the trail starts to go downhill and meet the road. The third tree, on the left, that we did not observe last year was full of immature acorns. The largest ones were light green.

Along this stretch, we found a labyrinth spider that caught prey, which it held first then spun it while holding it up, and then put it down again. It was a surprise to find a harvestman under a tanoak leaf; usually we only see these close to the ground, at night. We also found one at the opposite end of the trail, a couple of feet off the ground on a plant. Cicadas were ticking and humming.
A thistle had aphids being tended by ants, plus ladybird beetles, which eat aphids.
A metallic green leaf beetle hung around on coyote brush. And under a log was an ants nest, with a pile of larvae and pupae.
Also, we found self-heal next to the trail.

Turning back, we checked the tree near the trailhead. The higher catkins appeared ripe.

Further along, lots of orchids were in bloom.

We stopped for lunch around 12:45-1:00. A robber fly landed on the grass across from us. A few dragonflies patrolled around.

The birds that I heard included Steller’s Jay, Bushtit, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Hutton’s Virero, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Hairy Woodpecker, and Dark-eyed Junco. We saw the woodpecker as we ate lunch.

A tree on the left that we’d noted last year by the nettle patch had long catkins, and some older yellowish green acorns. Another had some leaves that had been chewed upon.

A brown crab spider on nettle appeared to be a male, but after examining the first photo, the palps turned into an ant! Spiders supposedly rarely take ants. We found more true bugs, including a few dark ones on nettle.

The last tree, on Gordon Mill Trail about 1.5 miles from the entrance, had yellow tape from last year. Like last year in August, there was buzzing above our heads. We noted two stages of acorns, and ripe catkins. One had a small black beetle in it. While looking around, I noticed something that I had thought originally was a piece of plant material, but when I looked at it again, it was actually a clump of lacewing eggs attached to the tip of a dead tanoak leaf. After taking several photos, we headed back and finished up at 2:45.

See photos here.

Tanoaks at El Corte de Madera

I went up on Saturday, 8/8, to spend some time before our request hike. I started out around 2:15 from gate EC03.

It was warm, 80-85 degrees, with a slight breeze. Some butterflies were flying, and bumble bees visited the purple thistles. Grasshoppers were still around.

I stopped first at the tree nearest the gate, which is usually in shade when we’ve been there. A lot of the catkins had fallen off. I headed down Gordon Mill Trail, aiming for the tree that JO had found with pollinators a little over a mile in. I didn’t get that far.

There were a couple of guys down in the seep on the left side after a curve, who seemed to be looking for artifacts.

A few California Harebells were out, and Sneezeweed had yellow balls on the stems.

At around 3:00, I reached a tree on the left side, in the sun, with a yellow ribbon on it. It was slightly less than a mile in. We may have passed this one before, but I stopped to check out the state of the tree since it the catkins looked good. There was a lot of buzzing around the upper parts. When close, I could get a faint whiff of the catkin odor.
I noticed a lot of very small developing female flowers. As I was examining the flowers, a honey bee landed on a nearby catkin cluster and began to collect pollen. It had a load of yellow pollen already.

Honey bee with pollen load

I decided to do some observations there, since there was activity. I started an observation at 3:10. Two honey bees visited, and made 6 and 11 collections respectively. There were 27 male flowers, and 8 very small female flowers.The bees tended to visit the same catkins, and sometimes went between two of them. One of them visited that cluster, went to the next one, and returned. A Syrphid Fly (?) buzzed closely around one of the catkins, but didn’t land, and a black Bee Fly landed on a catkin on the cluster to the left.
I watched for another 10 minutes, and this time there were 4 visits, also by a honey bee. Sometimes small flies would land on the leaves.

I was getting warm standing in the sun, so I went closer to count the flowers in the cluster. I found a piece of catkin on top of a leaf, but when I looked more closely, it was a caterpillar! Excellent camouflage.

The breeze was making it difficult to get photos of the female flowers and the caterpillar, so I took a leaf and got the caterpillar down. While I was crouched down taking photos, a Sheriff vehicle drove by.

Catkin-mimicing caterpillar

I put the caterpillar back up on the cluster, and changed some settings on my camera. When I was trying to relocate the caterpillar, which had crawled into a shady part, I found a very small caterpillar or sawfly larva, .5″-long, under one of the leaves, near the stem. There was also a pile of something that may have been some other kind of larva. They were gray and oval-shaped with pointed ends. Not until I looked at one of the photos did I see the adult.

I got back to the gate around 4:30, and headed to Russian Ridge.

Photos are here.

Tanoaks at El Corte de Madera

JO and I checked out the trees on July 4, arriving a little before 10:00. It was a bit cool, but warmed up to around 75 degrees by noon. The catkins on the trees near some big rocks on the left were still mostly immature. Some on the other side of the trail had some stamens and aroma if you put your nose right up to them.

We found trees close to the gate that we hadn’t looked at the first time. These had some catkins in the sun, at nearly eye level. They didn’t seem to be as brushy-looking as the ones at Long Ridge. Under the hand lens, I could see a few anthers with pollen, and the rest appeared to be closed. The pollen is light yellow and seems pretty much the same color as the anthers.

Tanoak stamen (middle clump) and pollen

There were some butterflies flying around nearby, but not landing on the tanoaks. One landed on the next door coffeeberry, which seemed to attract obvious pollinators. There was also a honeysuckle vine on the other side, the flowers of which were open with stamens and anthers with pollen.

We noted that the most mature catkins were higher on the trees, and in a cluster, some were more mature, plus on an individual catkin, which is a bunch of flowers, some were also more mature. We also noticed that the lumpy look of some of the catkins seems to be flowers that are about to burst open with stamens. We saw one that was open, and the stamens were coiled up in the lump opening. See JO’s photo.

We decided to try a 10-minute observation period even though not all the catkins were ready. My group had no obvious visitors, but there was a small black beetle at the base of one of the catkin clusters. On this same tree were some large, reddish ants, and a jumping spider. both of which crawled over the catkins that JO was watching. This begged the question, if there are any kind of pollinators (accidental or otherwise) moving around, given the lack of obvious female flowers, is the pollen going to get anywhere useful?

Other interesting things: a pollen-covered sleeping fly or bee in a sticky monkey flower, a pair of spiders apparently mating but then turned into post-mating snacking by the female, more insects and arachnids on the stinging nettles–another jumping spider, more rolled leaves tied with silk, one containing a chrysalis (likely Red Admiral), another containing an earwig, quite a few robber flies, some with prey, and a small colorful orb weaver on a tanoak. We also saw a lizard quickly crossing the trail, but we couldn’t find it after it ducked under the bottom foliage of a tree. It was stocky-looking, seemed smooth with a bluntish nose, brownish with slate-colored sides. It was larger than a fence lizard, maybe 7-8″ long. A Hermit Thrush was singing, Red-breasted Nuthatch and I think Pygmy Nuthatch were calling. Also a Pacific-slope Flycatcher and a Hutton’s Vireo were calling.

Other photos here (the tanoak photos are at the beginning).

Note regarding Windy Hill: DP reports 6-7 small flies visiting catkins seen today.

Tanoaks at El Corte de Madera

JO and I went up to ECDM around 12:30 today to see whether our trees were ripe for pollinators. It threatened to be foggy, but turned out to be sunny and around 75 degrees. We found three trees with catkins at near eye level. Other trees with catkins were too high to see easily, and still more had no catkins.

Some trees with immature? catkins had female parts that appeared to be more developed, being green spiky future acorn caps, with small short acorn beginnings. One had old brown catkins next to it. Are these last year’s female flowers?

The only noticeable insect activity around the tanoaks was a small cloud of flies up high over a branch in the sun, and another fly just checking things out but not landing.

There were a lot of grasshoppers in the sunny spots in the trail. The ones whose legs I could see had blue on them. One large one landed in front of us. Then a smaller one landed about 6″ away from it. It made some sounds, and approached the larger one. It tried to climb on, but the larger would have none of that and flew.

Courting grasshoppers

Stridulation presumably by male while on ground, and crepitation while flying away. Recorded with an Olympus LS-10.

There were a surprising number of insects on stinging nettle, including what could be Red Admiral caterpillars in rolled-leaf retreats. Some caterpillars had also created retreats in the nearby thistle.

Caterpillar in thistle retreat

There were quite a few crab spiders and other small spiders. A butterfly flew across the trail, disappearing, and left us wondering what it was. It was medium-sized and appeared to have black and green on it.

Hermit Thrush sang, Red-breasted Nuthatch and Hutton’s Vireo called, and we saw a California Quail family and baby Dark-eyed Junco.

Here are the rest of the photos.