A lot of sightings from the last couple of weeks:
The kids said they were seeing blue jellyfish in the water when they went surfing and when we went the next day the beach was covered with velella velella aka By the Wind Sailors. These aren’t particularly dangerous to humans, thankfully, but it was fascinating to see so many washed up on the beach. We have had them around here before, just not so many at once. It reminded me of the year we had a similar showing but with pelagic crabs.
The water also had a noticeable brown tint to it, you can see it in this pic of our kids trying to duck dive & surf. Maybe red tide? I had a thought to head down that night to see about bioluminescence in the water, but sleep overtook me.
Our nasturtium was just coming in and starting to bloom in the back of our home, but was savagely raked away by the HOA landscapers a couple days ago. Before the tragedy, I got this video of my son playing with a nasturtium leaf. A dear South African friend showed me this once and it is so fun and makes you wonder.
We took a little trip up the local mountain to Big Bear and my nature loving friend Melissa suggested visiting the Pebble Plains, which I had never heard of before. Something about the freezing and heating of the ground in this area prevents typical plants to grow and makes it ideal for a unique set of very short plants that don’t grow anywhere else. Here are a few I was able to capture. It’s only the beginning of the season and they said the best time for viewing is in July or so.
Back in our neck of the woods, our local botanical preserve is in full bloom. In one of the pictures you can see the mustard on the opposing hill, which is a love/hate relationship for locals. It turns into a fire hazard late in the year and is also non-native so it takes over native habitat. Either way, it’s a sign of Spring for us each year as our hills are painted yellow. The picture at the top of this post is also from the preserve.
And lastly we came full circle back to the beach and found some fun things along the tideline. Some tiny gooseneck barnacles were attached to piece of driftwood. Their necks are a beautiful blue color when they’re this young. I put them in some water (in a mussel shell I found) and they came out to feed right away.
We also found a couple of marine worms. The second one was wrapped around my toes as I was resting them on the dry sand! It has an eversible pharynx that it shoots out.