Another update.... a sad one. None of this years GambelÂs Quail chicks survived, nor has most of the around 50-60 adult birds who visited my feeders daily. I've lost at least a couple of cottontails, there are very few mourning dove now, one neighbor told me they have lost their cat and another neighbor down the road with two small yapping dogs that were a nuisance I haven't heard a bark from for a couple of week snow. So I think with the weird spring weather patterns it has been hard to make it out on the surrounding desert and the predators are getting by taking the easy pickings in the residential neighborhoods. Further evident maybe as besides my run in with a coyote, I hear them close almost nightly, have seen a couple more in front of the place and also both a bobcat and kit fox. So there is not much coming to my feeders now.... maybe 5-6 quail, a couple of cottontails, almost no doves and even a highly reduced number of song birds and hummingbirds. On the plus side the sky bandits (pigeons) are few and far between. Natures way of staying in balance, same as with the butterflies, but it is going to be a slow year for me without the wild critters around the place. Could take years for them to come back. Oh well, there is always household chores to do. My favorite pastime. LOL Larry

Lydia 1959...As far as it's known, from decades of research by the PMCA and other organizations, the Purple Martins in the eastern half of the U.S. nest only in man-made cavities, and near human activity. Since the times before Columbus they have "imprinted" on humans. The eastern Native Americans lured them to their villages and gardens by setting natural gourds on sticks and dead trees. They knew when the Purple Martins were near, the flying insects were kept at bay. There is a small scattering of PMs on the west coast, and they seem to be nesting in single family groups around piers. There was a lot of excitement when a colony was discovered nesting in drainage pipes under highway overpasses around the Sacramento area. Still, for the vase majority of the Purple Martins, and the entire eastern population, it's man made housing. You can see the problem since fewer and fewer people are offering, and safely managing, housing for them. The PMs, along with our native blue birds, started declining in the 1950s and were fast approaching endangered status. The main causes were lack of housing being offered to them, loss of wooden fence posts in the case of the blue birds, and the explosion of the imported, non-native English House Sparrow that will kill/destroy any cavity nester, its eggs and its chicks, that it can find...PMs, bluebirds, chickadees, woodpeckers, nuthatches, etc. all fall prey to these non-natives. So, loss of habitat, explosive numbers of non-native competitors, and a lack of well-managed housing not being offered is the main culprits of the decline of our native cavity nesters. I wish you could come visit. I sit under the feeder tree each morning with my tea and listen to the beautiful chatter, chortles, and songs of the PMs. They're here for such a short time, but I try to enjoy them enough to last the rest of the year. They travel to and from southern Brazil each year to raise their families. They come back to the same colony each year. They are magical!

I have a pocket of oak trees in my front yard that is home to many creatures. We had a hawk in our tree one year and that bird was such a messy, wasteful eater- dead birds and squirrels everywhere. I put up an eagle decoy and moved it around but it didn’t do much. The hawks moved to the neighbor across the street the next year. And then to the neighbor next door after that. IDK if it’s the same bird or maybe there’s more than one bird/family. They do flybys and hunt in my yard but they dont live in it anymore. I thoroughly enjoy watching this little microcosm of forest life...most times. The kids were yelling one day to come look at the window. A heron was in my little backyard pond and was eating my fish like it was a buffet.

I think you may have dodged a bullet there by not having success with O. pes-carpae, Melissa. I, a bit unfortunately, did not with another South African bulb, Gladiolus tristis, which showed up as a little, anonymous hitchhiker in a pot of something else I bought from the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden's plant sale. That single plant has now become hundreds or thousands in the bed it landed in and there is no getting rid of it. Like O. pes-carpae, it spreads via tiny bulblets which get left behind even if you pull the larger plant out, but also by seed (masses of seed in every pod!). [Relevant to this, I once heard second-hand of discussions among scientists at the Botanical Garden at a meeting about invasive plants in California, where one determination was that a major source of invasive species in Berkeley's Strawberry Canyon and beyond is the Botanical Garden itself -- yet another case of, "We have met the enemy and he is us."] I say "a bit unfortunately" because it is a lovely flower with a glorious, almost-intoxicating night scent, even as it is annoying in how quickly it proliferates and makes that part of the spring garden messier than I would like. It is a great, long-lasting cut flower. This was 10 years ago, when there were still discreet clumps: I am so glad to hear of the substantial amount of rainfall you are getting! The duration of temporary ponds needed to support frog and toad reproduction varies according to the species and climate. Along the California coast, a pond that lasts at least through June or July can support California Red-legged frog (CRLF) reproduction, for example. Conservation biologists take advantage of this fact for one strategy to get rid of invasive bullfrogs that can negatively impact CRLF populations: because of cold summer temperatures along our coast, non-native bullfrogs require two years to metamorphose from being a tadpole versus the shorter period required by the CRLF, so draining the pond after the CRLF frogs have left it destroys the bullfrog tadpoles. A little research into the length of time spent as tadpoles for your local frog and toad species, as well as other preferred pond conditions, would let you know how long the ponds need to persist. For example, CRLF prefer that there be some sort of spiky aquatic vegetation on which to attach their egg masses, such as Eleocharis or Schoenoplectus, whereas I've seen Pacific Chorous frogs (aka tree frogs) successfully produce young in plain water that was retained in some deep ruts left by Army tanks doing winter practice manuevers in clay soil, with no vegetation at all.