Diario de gyrrlfalcon

As we approach our two-month anniversary, the San Mateo Bio-Blitz just reached 4,000 observations! Thanks to all seventy-one participants: everyone recruit one more participant, as we help iNaturalist to expand.

Sequoia Audubon would like to follow the example set by the McLaren Park Bio-Blitz last month, and sponsor some one-day, site-specific bio-blitzes in San Mateo county. The idea of these events is to bring together specialists, experts, beginners, enthusiasts, and photographers, to thoroughly comb one circumscribed area, looking for all the identifiable plant and animal life within it. These are great fun - like a party, really! - and the viewing can be interspersed with lunch and dinner breaks to compare and upload what people are discovering and photographing.

Sequoia Audubon has its summer planning meeting on July 21st this year. We'll entertain (and likely accept) any concrete ideas for locations and logistics for bio-blitzes between August 2013 and July 2014 at that time. Contact me, gyrrlfalcon (at earthlink dot net, if you'd prefer email), with your suggestions.

I have been "auditioning" new trails for a regular survey, to complement the one I do at Edgewood. Laurelwood, Windy Hill, Purisima Redwoods, and Thornewood. I have been looking with an eye to many taxa, not just birds.

Today, on my regular monthly hike in the state Audubon property, I saw ten species of butterflies that I could identify on my own. At the same time, at least a dozen more 'possibles' got away. I remarked, to Pati, the friend with whom I was hiking, how much this exercise humbled me. So I was surprised when I got home and had eleven definitive IDs. The best was the Satyr Comma that Pati spotted, that unfortunately flew before I could photograph it. Here are the ID'ed species:

Satyr Comma
Anise Swallowtail
Variable Checkerspot
Northern Checkerspot
Mylitta Crescent
Spring "Echo" Azure
Common Wood Nymph
Common Buckeye
California Sister
California Ringlet
Fiery Skipper

For all I know, I got some of these wrong, too. But I am pleased that I know something of all of these species, including the simple fact that they are locally possible and flying 'bout now.