Joshua Tree 2009

Ghost flower (Mohavea confertiflora). I stopped by the visitor center when I rolled into the park and picked up one of those quick foldable flower guides. This flower popped out immediately and I thought, "Oh, gotta see that." Drove done the road a little ways, picked one of many identical rocky hillsides, walked up it, and found a nice patch of these beauties.

Unknown ants with goddamn cool spines and weird heads. They were very, very, very slowly excavating. Each was maybe about 8 cmmm long. Nest entrance was shaped like a cinder cone, maybe 30-40 cm across.

Imagine a movie in which our governor visits an alien planet and hunts down a group of alien military types, one by one, in the wilderness, until only one is left. Arnold has heat vision, of course, but one alien figures this out and covers itself with sand to disguise its own heat signature, thereby becoming invisible to this human hunter. Let's call the film Bizarro Predator. I think this is what our protagonist would look like. Except spiders are poikilotherms and don't have heat and are probably invisible to heat-sensing interstellar predators. D'oh.

Wish I'd spent more time with this creature because it was quite beautiful. Rosy, silky silver, and yet all it got were shaky hands and a forgotten ISO. I haven't attempted to key it out yet but I don't have high hopes, because, well it's a spider. Spiders are hard when they're not dead in a dish. It had really enormous spinnerets (see below), so possibly a gnaphosid? Carapace was 4-5 mm, total body length something like 10-12 mm. Found under a rock on a very low hill near Cottonwood Springs camping area.

Not sure, don't speak hummingbird. Also, this is Anna's, right? I spent the whole time convinced they were Costa's, until on the way back I told a woman I'd been seeing costas and she seemed surprised It's got dark throat feathers extending much further down the chest than most Anna's in the Bay Area, but when the light caught them they seemed more red than purple. Also they were almost all big and boisterous.

According to the good folks at BugGuide, this is not a mutillid as I first thought but a member of the family Bradynobaenidae, a closely related family that is somewhat mysterious. There even some speculation that they may parasitize solpugids!

The ranger at the Cottonwood Springs visitor center mentioned that these were blooming near Lost Palms Oasis. I didn't really remember what she had called them, but when I cam across them, it was pretty obvious they were what she was talking about. Truly arresting flowers.

I am fairly certain this is Loxosceles. Not too many 6-eyed spiders with eyes arranged like this, I think, plus the silk looks cribellate (though apparently it only looks that way). Loxosceles deserta seems like a possibility based on location. Can anyone confirm that? Found under a fallen yucca along the trail to Lost Palms Oasis.

You know, when I saw this totally convinced this was a Lesser Goldfinch, but now that I'm looking it up, I am only 80% sure. It's got the dark bill and green back, but ... and incomplete black cap. Frustrating. Any bird nerds want to weigh in? My bird nerditude is insufficient.

I decided not to bring my proper camera and telelphoto on this mini-trip to Boy Scout ... and of course saw cool birds, like this Northern Shrike (a first for me!). Actually, there were a bunch of shrikes out that morning. Though the mask is quite large, I think it's a Northern and not a Loggerhead because of the very clear hook in its bill.