Young mushroom

This mushroom popped up in a penstemon I bought at the Fullerton College plant sale a few weeks ago, and was planting yesterday.  The spore print is a little smeared -- the cap dried up and shrank to much less than a quarter of its original size during the time I was taking the print (overnight) -- but is clearly black in color.

Perhaps Coprinopsis friesii or one of the Parasola plicatilis group?

Decorated granite moth

Found this little decorated granite moth in the bathroom yesterday morning, very similar to the one I posted a few years ago.  I couldn't quite tell if the coloring of this one is more brown than the other, because there is very little natural light in this bathroom and the bulb makes everything a bit golden.

Unidentified birds' nests, possibly northern mockingbird?

These nests were built in our large "Duchesse de Brabant" rosebush this past summer.  I knew of one nest, since when I was out working in the garden one day, the alarmed parents worked their "distraction" techniques on me, hopping a few feet away from the rose bush, chirping loudly, hopping away a few feet more, then chirping again.  Later I could see the nest among the canes near the top of the rosebush, which is about six feet high.  I rarely saw any other activity near the nest, though.

A few weeks ago when we were pruning back the plumbago that had thoroughly infiltrated the rosebush, not one but two nests were knocked out.  There was no evidence of eggshells anywhere, and the nests were both full of rose and plumbago litter, so I don't know if either was used at all, or if the clutch had grown up and left the nest already, or even if one of the nests was last year's.

The nests are about 6" in diameter and about 3" deep (16cm x 8cm), and rather scruffy-looking, though in the builders' defense, pine needles are probably just a little too stiff for tidy construction.  The nests are certainly sturdy, as they survived getting thrashed around and knocked out of the rosebush and have been sitting exposed on the deck for a few weeks now.

Maybe a song sparrow or house finch, by the looks of the nests?  Selecting the appropriate criteria at NestWatch retrieves only lesser goldfinch and northern mockingbird, and I'm pretty sure I have never seen goldfinches here, whereas the mockingbird could be the pair I saw, and we certainly have these night-singers in abundance.

These images are all from Wikimedia Commons -- credits are "By DickDaniels (http://carolinabirds.org/) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18062292", "By cuatrok77 - NORTHERN MOCKINGBIRDUploaded by Amada44, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25141189", and "By Calibas - Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3076875".

Praying mantis

I saw this mantis as I was sweeping the driveway this morning -- thought it was a stick my broom had missed and was about to pick it up when it started to walk away!  It was very sluggish and crawled up the leg of this pot instead of flying, but it is a cool and overcast morning, so perhaps the mantis just hasn't warmed up yet.

The mantis is generally a beneficial insect, eating flies, mosquitoes, crickets, aphids, etc., but being a voracious carnivore it will also eat other beneficial insects, including other mantises.

Brown marmorated stink bug

We caught this in the house this afternoon -- identified it as a brown marmorated stink bug (Halyomorpha halys). Yuck.

Apparently this bug, accidentally imported from Asia in the 1990s, is now a serious pest, with a website with some pretty big names attached to it dedicated to controlling it. More advice from Penn State is found here.  The bugs feed on soft-skinned fruits such as apples, peaches, grapes, etc. disfiguring the crops and making them unsellable, and the stinky secretion they produce when threatened can cause allergic reactions in humans.