The issue of the model airplanes was raised by Peggy Oki, who spoke to the Council recently about her concern that the planes might be bothering the white-tailed kites (Elanus leucurus) that forage and roost at the bluffs. I’m inclined to be skeptical about that; it seems to me that the kites and the planes have been getting along okay, but I don’t have particularly good data to back that up.

With both proposed ordinances I find myself thinking about this: Natural areas need to have a constituency. They need for there to be people who use those areas and appreciate them and will go to bat for them when they’re threatened. Not everyone loves nature the way I do, but if those people get to walk their dogs or fly their model airplanes in a beautiful natural setting they’ll appreciate those places more. It might be worth putting up with a few modest impacts (like those that would result from allowing dogs at the marsh, or model airplanes at the bluffs) to help build the constituencies for those areas.

The bluffs, even more than the marsh, represent an interesting coming together of different groups of users. There are nature-lovers like me, people who watch the harbor seals from the overlook, people who walk dogs, ride bikes, play soccer and softball at Viola Fields, paint landscapes…

And then there are the trains.

Union Pacific’s railroad line runs right through the bluffs. In order to get to the seal overlook most people make what is an arguably illegal uncontrolled crossing of the tracks at the western end of the Artists Passage. You can see the trains approaching from the west, but the curve hides them from the east, and sometimes they’re moving at a pretty good clip. I’ve seen some close calls at that crossing that really scared me.

Railroad safety is important. Besides uncontrolled crossings, there’s the risk of operator error leading to train-on-train collisions. After a 2008 accident between a Union Pacific freight train and a Metrolink passenger train killed 15 people and injured dozens more, the federal government acted to require U.S. railroads to implement something called Positive Train Control (PTC), a sort of air-traffic-control system for trains. As part of implementing PTC, Union Pacific recently added some new antenna towers along their tracks, and a few weeks ago I came across this newly installed pole at the buffs:

I took a picture and sent it to Jackie Campbell, the director of the city’s Community Development department, and at the following week’s Planning Commission meeting Jackie reported that someone named Jason in Union Pacific’s code enforcement operation told her that the antenna pole was part of the railroad’s new PTC system. Union Pacific hadn’t bothered to tell anyone in Carpinteria that they were putting it in; I’m sure their attitude was: hey, if we had to stop and discuss our plans with every little municipality our lines go through we’d never get anything done.

Yes, but.

The Carpinteria bluffs are special. They offer visitors amazing views of the sea, the meadows, the trees, and the mountains, while a trick of the landscape hides most signs of nearby development. Back in the 1990s a grass-roots effort that included a group of Plein-Air landscape painters called the Oak Group raised nearly $4 million in a short span of time to buy the bluffs, then handed the parcel over to the city with a conservation easement requiring that the site’s unique views be protected. The city’s planning documents explicitly recognize the visual aesthetics at the bluffs as being of the highest order, and call for preserving those views as a key goal of the city. Venoco’s recent proposal to drill for oil next to the bluffs was rejected 70-30 by voters, in part because of the visual impacts of the proposed drilling rig. While visual aesthetics are normally a somewhat intangible concept, at the Carpinteria bluffs that concept has been made about as tangible as I can imagine.

I wish Union Pacific had talked to Carpinterians before they put in their new PTC pole. If they could have located it just a short distance to the east it would have been largely hidden, instead of intruding so prominently into our views of the ocean. Maybe they’d be willing to move it.

In the meantime I’m doing my best to ignore it. When I lived in L.A. I was often confronted by the ugliness of my surroundings, but there were times when the sky, especially, would make me catch my breath and stand marveling while everything else — cars, telephone poles, urban grime — disappeared.

That happens to me at the bluffs, too, and even with a Union Pacific antenna pole (or a pier) in the way, I’m sure it will keep happening.

That’s a female moth on the top, a male moth (identifiable by his feathery antennae) mating with her below, and a second male fluttering off to the side. That second male presumably was attracted by the female’s pheromones, but was too late on the scene to mate with her.

When I looked closer, I realized that the tree was full of oak moth caterpillars. Here’s a shot I took of one of those:

The California oak moth population rises and falls on a 6-8 year cycle. At population peak, stands of oaks can be completely defoliated. Interestingly, healthy oaks appear not to be harmed by these outbreaks. According to a 1986 postdoctoral study by David Hollinger of Stanford, nitrogen cycling is accelerated during the outbreaks, such that the moths actually help fertilize the soil, improving the oaks’ longterm health. See Herbivory and the cycling of nitrogen and phosphorus in isolated California oak trees.

Here’s a short video I took:

At the time I shot that video, I was transfixed by the beauty of the moths’ mating flight. In my memory, the scene is as quiet as a cathedral. After a few minutes I noticed another sound: the gentle, rain-like patter of caterpillar frass falling onto the leaves beneath the tree.

Watching the video after I downloaded it from my camera, the dominant sound is the traffic on the 101 freeway. I guess my brain filtered that out. Good job, brain.

Update: I went back later and noticed a bunch of pupae in an oak on the edge of the Viola Field parking. Here’s my favorite of the shots I got of those:

I also found this: the exuvia left behind after an adult moth emerged:

The first thing I noticed was this fly:

The helpful dipterid experts at Bugguide were quick to ID this as a sinuous bee fly (Hemipenthes sinuosa), a widespread North American species. The “sinuous” in the name refers to the wavy border between the black area at the front of the wing and the clear area at the back of the wing. The fact that there is a rounded black “meatball” along that border near the tip of each wing is what tells us this is H. sinuosa; other members of the genus have a more jagged border. According to Wikipedia, Hemipenthes larvae are hyperparasites on parasitic Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, and allies).

Not far from where I photographed the sinuous bee fly, I noticed a web with a cool-looking stabilimentum of trash running down the middle, and took this photo:

Silly me. I didn’t even notice what was sitting at the center of the web until I got home and looked at the images on my computer. Here’s a closer view:

That’s a female trashline orb weaver spider (Cyclosa turbinata). She spins a fresh web each night, using the debris from the old web (and the body parts of her prey) to build the stabilimentum, which she then uses as camouflage — highly effective camouflage, judging from my experience.

I photographed a second trashline orb weaver female, again without realizing it, a few minutes later:

Here’s the (slightly fuzzy) closeup. Again, she’s perched right at the center of the web, which I assume lets her respond quickly when she detects vibrations:

In both closeups you can see the two raised bumps on the dorsal side of the spider’s abdomen, near the front. Those bumps were cited by my helper on Bugguide as cementing the ID as C. turbinata.

I had fun examining the newly emerging flowers on the coyote brush. Coyote brush is dioecious, meaning that male and female flowers grow on separate plants. Here are the flowers just beginning to emerge on a male plant. The unopened buds have a globular shape, and the flowers, when they appear, form relatively shallow yellow disks:

Here are the flowers beginning to bloom on a female plant. The unopened buds are more elongated, and the flowers, when they appear, consist of long white filaments:

Later in the year, when the female plants go to seed, the coyote brush is filled with white, fluffy masses that blow away on the wind, each tuft of strands terminating in a single seed. The ability to disperse via wind is one of the things that makes coyote brush so effective at colonizing new areas, as it currently is doing in Mishopshno Meadow.

The female coyote brush flowers seemed to be much more effective at attracting honey bees (Apis mellifera) than did the male flowers, at least during my visit:

I also noticed this wasp crawling through the blossoms on a female plant, flicking its wings:

The Bugguide experts tell me this is a spider wasp in the family Pompilidae. According to Wikipedia’s spider wasp article:

Spider wasps are long-legged, solitary wasps that use a single spider as a host for feeding their larvae. They paralyze the spider with a venomous stinger. Once paralyzed, the spider is dragged to where a nest will be built – some wasps having already made a nest.

A single egg is laid on the abdomen of the spider, and the nest – or burrow – is closed.

I wonder if this wasp would have been interested in the nearby trashline orb weavers.

Finally, some shots of insect homes without actual insects:

Here’s a mass of old leaves and webbing that I’m guessing might have been holding an orange tortrix (Argyrotaenia franciscana) caterpillar or pupa, though I’m not sure. I’m curious what Charley Eiseman thinks about that.

I also liked this shot of a gall from the stem gall moth (Gnorimoschema baccharisella), with what I think is an emergence hole:

Here’s an old G. baccharisella stem gall, dried out with the passage of time, also with an apparent emergence hole:

Even though the background is fuzzy, you can recognize the location if you’re familiar with the Bluffs. The tip of the dead stem divides the north-south row of tamarisk (on the left) from the blue-gum eucalyptus of the Artists’ Passage (on the right). That first blue gum is actually the same tree I wrote about previously that blew over in the big wind back in January. It seems to be doing okay in its new, recumbent position.

At first I couldn’t see what was making the webs, but after a while, looking closer, I started to notice a few of these guys:

If I got too close or jiggled the foliage they would scuttle backwards, hiding themselves in the mass of leaves and webbing they had constructed.

I tried posting some photos to Bugguide, but haven’t had any responses so far. But I think I know what they are: orange tortrix (Argyrotaenia franciscana), a moth that is a common agricultural pest in the western states, especially near the coast.

Most of the coyote brush near the top of the trail is so infested that it’s hard to find a single clump of leaves that isn’t full of webbing. Other plants, which apparently were infested earlier on, have nothing but bare twigs at the outer tips of every branch.

I’m curious to see what happens to the coyote brush. There are a number of parasitic insects that prey on orange tortrix; my guess is that the outbreak will eventually be controlled by them, and the coyote brush will come back, just as it came back from being heavily pruned by green leaf beetle larvae, Trirhabda flavolimbata, at the marsh last year.

I think the coyote brush can probably handle the orange tortrix and leaf beetles, just like it handles the stem gall moths (Gnorimoschema baccharisella), bud gall midges (Rhopalomyia californica), and all the other creatures that live on it. They’ve evolved together, adapting to each other’s presence, and over the long haul the coyote brush seems to be doing just fine.

Back in January William and I took a walk at the Carpinteria bluffs, and saw that one of the big eucalyptus trees (Bluegum Eucalyptus, Eucalyptus globolus) along the Artists’ Passage had blown down in the wind. It was the easternmost tree, right where the path from the Bailard Avenue parking reaches the trees. The fallen tree was still there when I visited the bluffs today, and it actually seems to be doing okay for now; it’s at a steep angle, but the root ball seems to be more or less intact. I’m not sure if the city plans to do anything about it; I’ll have to ask Matt Roberts about that the next time I see him.

Toward the other end of the Artists’ Passage I noticed these interesting patterns in a fallen limb that had lost its bark:

I posted my photos to Bugguide.net, and Charley Eiseman (who else?) chimed in with some helpful pointers. The current consensus at Bugguide is that these galleries were made by the larvae of a species of cerambycid bark beetle, specifically, Phoracantha semipunctata, the Eucalyptus Longhorned Borer. That area in the upper picture where a bunch of small galleries diverge is where the beetle’s eggs were laid. As the larvae eat their way through the tree’s cambium layer they, and the galleries they make, grow larger, until you get the really wide galleries like the one in the lower photo. Eventually each larva eats a hole into the wood and pupates in it, before emerging as an adult beetle to repeat the cycle. I think that’s probably a pupation hole in the lower photo.

Like the trees they evolved to feed on, the Longhorned Borer is Australian. The Bluegum Eucalyptus trees were first brought to California from southern Queensland and Tasmania in the mid-1800s, and planted along the Southern Pacific Railroad lines as a source of lumber for railroad ties. According to Wikipedia, the railroad line that runs along the Artists’ Passage was completed in 1904, which I’m guessing is probably about the same time this row of trees was planted.

The beetles arrived in California in the 1980s, and have apparently become something of a pest. The galleries they leave behind are certainly interesting to look at, though.

Like the trees and the beetles, I’m not a native Carpinterian. I didn’t arrive here until 1995.

I think it’s an old, dried-out bud gall from the same midge I mentioned previously, Rhopalomyia californica. I like that you can see what I assume are the holes made by the adult midges when they emerged from the gall. I’m curious what the adult insect looks like. I’ve tried googling for images of it, but so far I haven’t found any. At least I have an idea of how big they are: just big enough to squeeze out of those holes.

Here’s an image I did find: Blogger user Raphael posted it in an item about wetland restoration at Shoreline Park in Long Beach:

This gall, which is still on a living plant, shows the same emergence holes as my dried version. I wonder what it looks like when the midges emerge. Do they all come out at the same time?

I’d really like to see that some day.

Update: They do emerge together. Check out this amazing series of photos taken by Charles Baughman on March 28, 2010, of a bunch of adult Rhopalomyia californica emerging in Boulder Creek in Santa Cruz County: Coyote Brush Bud Gall Midge – Rhopalomyia californica.

Later update: I take back part of what I wrote above: I don’t think those photos by Charles Baughman show adult midges emerging. I think they show the spent exuviae left behind after the emergence. Still beautiful and amazing images, of a phenomenon I’d still love to see firsthand. As I write this, at the tail end of 2010, we’re coming up on R. californica emergence season. I’ll make a point of checking those galls over the next several months, and see what I can find.

I’ve also seen them at the Carpinteria bluffs. (Thanks to William in both cases for pointing them out. Even though I was specifically looking for them, it took my perceptive 11-year-old to actually find them.)

The number of adult beetles on the coyote brush is still pretty small; I saw a few bushes that had 4 or 5 beetles climbing around in one area, but if the vast number of larvae I was seeing in the marsh a month or so ago is any indication, we’re due for a lot more beetles to appear in the weeks ahead.

This tree, which is one of the eucalyptus trees that grow along the Artist’s Passage at the bluffs, always makes me think of the anthropomorphized trees that try to grab Snow White when she’s lost in the forest:

The management plan for the bluffs has some interesting elements. One of them is that the (non-native) eucalyptus trees along the Artist’s Passage won’t be removed. They can be replaced over time with native trees (presumably sycamores), but the intention is that there will always be a row of mature trees along that part of the bluffs.

Another interesting provision of the management plan concerns the open meadow areas. The city is required to preserve those meadows as part of preserving the visual character of the bluffs. But the city is specifically prohibited from using motorized equipment (like a tractor) to do so.

My understanding is that before the public acquisition of the bluffs those meadows were plowed every few years using a tractor; that’s what kept them meadows. Now that process has stopped. What does that mean? Will the meadows gradually be replaced by coastal sage scrub?

I’ve asked Andrea Adams-Morden about it, and she says nobody really knows. Most of the grasses in the meadows are non-native African species. In a contest between them and the native scrub, which will win? My guess is that eventually the scrub will win. That would seem to conflict with the “maintain the meadows” language in the management plan, but with the process of succession being so slow (at least by human standards), and with the more-obvious means of meadow maintenance (either plowing or fire) either explicitly prohibited or politically infeasible, I think the likeliest outcome is that the meadows will gradually turn into scrub.

Here’s a view from the Rhodes Fleming Coastal Trail, looking north toward the Bailard Avenue parking. There’s meadow, but there’s also a fair amount of coyote bush (which has been dispersing into the area via its wind-blown seeds). I wonder what this will look like in 10 or 20 years.

Down at the seal overlook, the seal watch volunteer that I chatted with was annoyed: a few minutes before my arrival a jogger passed by, jogging from right to left. You can see the jogger’s tracks near the bottom of the sandy area in the shot I took:

A baby harbor seal, born that morning, was among the seals that stampeded into the water when the jogger passed by. That’s really dangerous for the baby seals; they can be trampled, and in general, the more the seals are disturbed the greater the chances that the pups will become separated from their mothers. As I stood there talking with the volunteer, though, a young seal that she identified as the pup in question emerged from the water, so hopefully things worked out okay in this case.

On my way back I stopped by a spot on the north side of the Artist’s Passage, where someone has erected a teepee of sticks to mark where oil has been oozing from the ground. The management plan refers to this location specifically; it describes it as being either an abandoned well or a natural seep, and calls for the city to figure out which one it is and, if it’s an abandoned well, to cap it and clean it up.

I don’t know if the question has been definitively answered. I know Susan Allen is convinced it’s an abandoned well, and it does seem like an odd place for a natural seep. I’d like to investigate the issue more, maybe in the photo archives at the Carpinteria Valley Museum of History. I’d be really interested to know if there are any historical photos that show oil drilling there.

It’s a relatively minor issue, as such concerns go. But I think it has some relevance as Carpinterians think about Venoco’s latest action. Last week Venoco said it was withdrawing the Paredon proposal that has been working its way through the city’s planning process. Now the company is pushing for a direct ballot initiative to approve the project.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say on that in the future. For now, I think about this patch of oil at the bluffs, and what it symbolizes. Presumably someone dug a well there once. Maybe they made some money. Maybe they didn’t. Eventually, though, they moved on. When they did, they left behind a bit of a mess that Carpinterians are dealing with to this day.

Check out this image:

Can you spot the harbor seal that isn’t actually a harbor seal? I think this might be a California sea lion. Here’s a close-up:

I scanned across that group with binoculars, looked right at that animal, noted that there was something different about it, but didn’t think anything more. I was looking for baby harbor seals, and it clearly wasn’t one of those, so I just kept going.

My brain cracks me up sometimes.

The tide was lower, and the number of seals greater, than when we were there yesterday; it looks to me like there were close to 200 seals hauled out.

On our way back, Linda noticed a dead pelican on a ledge below the top of the bluffs. You can see it slightly left of center in this view towards Rincon:

Here’s a closer view, where you can see that this was an adult brown pelican, with the pretty cream plumage on the head and neck. It hadn’t molted into the chestnut breeding plumage it would have had soon if it had survived:

Apparently there have been a lot of brown pelicans dying in southern California since early January, some of them after acting disoriented and flying to unusual inland locations. Scientific American’s blog summarized news coverage of the story: Did bad weather kill, sicken California brown pelicans? As the title indicates, current suspicion focuses on a sudden winter storm the birds faced in the Pacific Northwest, which caused a large number of them to make an emergency trip south, leaving them exhausted and vulnerable. Could this bird have been one of those affected?

I also took some photos of plants along the trail, starting with that same Salvia species (I assume) that I’ve been trying to identify:

I also took this shot of what I believe is California saltbush:

And this shot of what I think is lemonade berry, currently in bloom with a lot of small, pink flowers:

Here’s a shot of the area behind the seal viewing overlook where Venoco has proposed a new oil drilling project. The Paredon project, as it’s called, is currently working its way through the environmental-review process.

You can read more — much, much more — about Paredon at the city’s community development project information page. The latest I’ve heard is that more work is being done on the EIR based on input from the city’s environmental review committee, and that the project might come before the planning commission sometime this summer, with the city council getting it sometime after that. There’s a good chance that whichever side loses the decision before the city council will then pursue some kind of public referendum.