I've Been Working at the Rancho

I was sick last week and had to miss class. Unfortunately, that absence put me over the maximum number of hours I was allowed to miss. I knew that I needed to make up those hours in order to complete the program. Thankfully, Alison Bruesehoff, Executive Director of the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum, had a suggestion. As part of the California Naturalist Program, each student is required to complete a Capstone Project, which benefits the program site. My Capstone Project is this blog, a chronicle of the California Naturalist Program at the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum, from a student's perspective. Several other students have been working on the design of a new children's garden. It was in this area that Alison thought I could do some extra work. The group will present their plan on the final day of classes. However, before the Rancho can begin implementing the new design, space needed to be cleared. The proposed area is currently used as an outdoor classroom in which elementary students learn to make butter, pan for gold, and create adobe bricks. As such, it wasn't really messy; it just needed a few people to come in and do some cleaning and brush removal. It is possible that some of my classmates had already spent time working on this area. I certainly don't want to claim credit for all the work. In fact, When I arrived yesterday, several men were working with chainsaws and clearing out the brush. My task was to move and organize the stacks of pots that had collected in the area and to transfer a scattering of hay into what will become a new compost area.

Before - part of the work involved moving and organizing a collection of pots

Adobe bricks drying in the sun

Although I had planned to spend much of my day at the Rancho, I had not anticipated that my younger son would wake up feeling sick and need to stay home. Although he was not feeling well enough to attend school, he was healthy enough to come to work with me. I was happy to spend some extra time with him and to have the opportunity to show off the Rancho. Since the end of January, I've spent a lot of time there, before yesterday, no one in my family had ever visited it.

I set to work while my son played, and it was not long before I came across my first wildlife discovery. A short, red centipede was hiding in one of the smallest terracotta pots. I carefully relocated the centipede to a patch of damp leaf litter. Excited by the find, my son and I kept a running count of centipedes. During the course of our work (yes, my son happily moved wheelbarrows full of wet hay to the new compost pile) we saw encountered centipedes.

Stone Centipede (Order Lithobiomorpha)

My next discovery was the empty shell of a terrestrial snail. It was not the type of snail that people often try to eradicate from gardens, which has a rounded, domed shell, but a different variety, flat, and approximately the size of a dime. It seems that both centipedes and this type of snail do well, living in moist, leafy environments.

Unidentified Terrestrial Snail Shell (Order Stylommatophora)

It was my son who discovered the sap. Children love sap. I remember picking it off trees when I was young. As a naturalist, I rather cringe at memories of driving nails into my front yard tree so that the sap would run, and I could play with it. This tree had several large sections of beautiful, glass-like sap. I am not an arborist. Therefore, I am not trained to recognize if an excess of sap indicates anything about the health of a tree. What I do know, is that it was visually stunning, and its sculptural nature almost compelled me and my son to explore it with our hands, as well as our eyes.

A sculpture in sap

It was while I was preparing to dump a load of hay that I saw a flash of red-orange fly out from the base of the compost pile. I tracked it with my eyes and made a mental note of where it landed. Then I did what I always do in that sort of situation -- rush for my camera. I was glad to discover that the moth had stayed in one place while I retrieved my camera and that it seemed willing to sit for a photograph. I have not yet identified the moth, although I suspect that it is in the family of Owlet moths, known as Noctuidae. If any reader knows the right ID, please be sure to add it to the comments!

Unidentified Moth (Family Noctuidae?)

Tiring of work, my son enjoyed spending the remainder of his time with the "roly-pollies," more correctly known as pillbugs.

My son, playing with pillbugs

He was especially happy to discover that one pillbug had golden tones.

Common Pillbug (Armadillidium vulgare)

Other wildlife sightings included a mourning dove...

Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura)

a gray bird grasshopper...

Gray Bird Grasshopper (Schistocerca nitens)

... and an abandoned beehive, which had probably been covered to prevent future colonies from taking up residency because the tree sits just to the side of a heavily trafficked walkway.

Screened-off opening in California Pepper Tree

Detail of honeycomb structure

Finally, I spotted a black-throated gray warbler -- a new addition to my life list! The bird was too high up in the tree for me to distinguish much detail at the time. All I knew was that it looked and behaved differently than anything I had seen to date. My best guess when reviewing the photographs at home was that it might be a juvenile black-and-white warbler. Although the website eBird suggested that the location and timing might not be correct for that identification, it seemed the best match. I entered my photographs into iNaturalist and asked for help with confirming my ID. Almost immediately, I received several responses from iNaturalist community members. They all agreed on one identification -- black-throated gray warbler. I then went back to eBird and looked more closely at historical data for the black-and-white warbler. There have been April sightings of the black-and-white warbler in the South Bay area in previous years. Furthermore, my field guide suggests that this area does fall within the extent of the bird's irregular range. For now, though, I am recognizing the community ID on iNaturalist and calling it a black-throated gray warbler. What's your opinion? Enter it in the comments section!

Black-throated Gray Warbler (Setophaga nigrescens)

Black-throated Gray Warbler (Setophaga nigrescens)

Black-throated Gray Warbler (Setophaga nigrescens)

With all my bird watching and bug spotting, you might wonder, did I actually complete the task I was assigned? Yes. When my son and I left for the day, the area was cleared and ready for the next phase of development. I can't wait to see how the new children's garden progresses.

After - pots are cleared and the compost pile has grown

To see more photographs from the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum and the South Bay area of Los Angeles, click on the following links:

• Dominguez Rancho California Naturalist Project on iNaturalist 

• Neighborhood Naturalist on Flickr