Question from @castiron about animals and plants

[sonia]

Thanks for the thought-provoking question, castiron! I'd be interested in your answer, too.

What are your favorite local animals and plants? Are there any particular species that you miss from other places you've lived?
I've been really enjoying the song of the little house finches here in Oakland. They like to perch on the telephone wires and chat with each other around sunset. I haven't been hearing them lately - maybe they migrate for the winter. I didn't know which bird it was until someone told me recently, but I realized the sound was familiar from when I lived here before, and I had missed it.

I love the smell of eucalyptus in the warm sun when I'm biking up in the hills. There's less of that than there used to be, because those volatile oils make them go up like torches in a fire, so they've cut a lot of them down.

I used to whistle back to a bobwhite growing up in Virginia. Haven't heard those anywhere else I've lived. Just learned that it's all one word and a kind of quail when I looked up whether it's capitalized.

Comments

[elainegrey]

I miss the bobwhites from growing up in the southeast. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/everybody-likes-bobwhite-is-that-enough-to-save-them/ We have too much cover on our lot to make habitat for them.

[sonia]

Thanks for the link! Sad to read, but not surprising, unfortunately.

[jesse_the_k]

Eucalyptus is the only scent I can tolerate in soap &c, so I can fully appreciate the smell you enjoyed.

Round these parts it’s the pine trees—another complex tarry-oily fragrance, plus the extra tender dustiness of the needles on their journey to soil.

Three bird calls:

• oboe woot from the horned owl apartment in our yard’s spruce tree
• alto recorder of mourning doves
• unlubricated hinge of the sand hill cranes commuting between a local pond and the golf course

[sonia]

Interesting that you can tolerate eucalyptus scent! In Blake Garden there's an Australian section with lots of sharply aromatic plants that's wonderful in the warm sun.

I love the musical (and not) analogies for your local bird calls. How cool that you have sandhill cranes around!

[castiron]

Sorry for the belated response!

My favorite local critter is the black vulture; I've been fascinated by them ever since I went to a talk by a raptor rescue group in 1995 and the black vulture flew across the auditorium and landed in the aisle by me. This is the time of year when I'll often see one or two hanging out on the poles in the office parking lot.

Favorite local plant is definitely the bluebonnet, but I also have a grudging admiration for what I think is a member of the hackberry family of trees. They sprout up around fences, due to birds pooping out the seeds, and once they've established a root system they're almost impossible to get rid of -- trim them to the ground, and they grow right back. As a homeowner who wants the privacy fences and the house foundation to stay in good shape, I'm annoyed by them; as an observer of the natural world, I admire their persistence and think they'd be a great emblem for a resistance movement.

The plant I miss the most from my childhood is white clover. It's not that it doesn't grow around here, but I rarely run across it; it's not ubiquitous like it was where I grew up.

[sonia]

Ooh, black vultures are interesting. I'm used to seeing turkey vultures around, and didn't realize we have more kinds.

I'm not familiar with bluebonnet or your invasive tree (although I've dug out roots of other invasive plants), but I also grew up around white clover. I liked walking through it barefoot but had to watch out for bees who also liked it.

[castiron]

Hackberry's not even an invasive; it's native to the area, and very very very good at growing where it wants. I like it when it's in the middle of the yard. just not right up against the house foundation or fence.