Bushtit's nest

We noticed this bird's nest in the honeysuckle growing over a chain-link fence in our garden this afternoon.  The nest is about 8 in. long (20cm), and about the size of a grapefruit or large apple at the bottom.  You can clearly see the opening near the top of the nest in the photo above and the next one.

There is an old Bearss lime tree with low-hanging branches above, but the nest is actually in the tangle of honeysuckle, a little less than five feet off the ground.  It is constructed of twigs and leaves and various garden rubbish, including bits of newspaper that we put down as mulch a few months ago, and possibly a piece of pink dryer lint! It is probably a bushtit's nest, but we haven't seen any occupants yet.


The photos are all full-size --

This is the back of the nest, which is on the other side of the chain-link fence.

San Diego alligator lizard

We caught this little lizard in the bathroom this morning!  I suspect that it is a juvenile alligator lizard (Elgaria multicarinata), though rather larger than the ones in the photos at California Herps, perhaps about 7 inches (18 cm).  Its tail is very long -- perhaps the lizard has never lost it.  Its profile looks very different in the bottom photo, but perhaps this is at least partly due to the distortion at the rim of the glass bowl we caught it in.

We photographed it before setting it loose outside.

Update: Gary at California Herps tells me that it is a juvenile San Diego alligator lizard (E. multicarinata webbii), and probably still with its original tail.  The San Diego is the longest subspecies of Southern Alligator Lizard -- up to 16 inches total length -- and is widely found throughout southern California, in the wild in grassland, open forest, and chaparral, and though somewhat secretive are also often seen in suburban yards and garages.

A bird's nest

This bird's nest fell -- empty -- out of the big pine in our backyard.

Western fence lizard

A western fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis), one of the most common lizards in Southern California.

This was actually in Yorba Linda, but it is hard to get good pictures of lizards, they skitter off so quickly most of the time.

Squirrels' drey

The squirrels' nest, or drey, very high up in our big pine tree in the backyard.

Fox squirrel

We have for a number of years had a colony of fox squirrels (Sciurus niger) living in this pine tree.

Fox squirrels range in size from 17.5 to 27.5 inches (45 to 70 cm) -- nearly half of that tail -- and weigh 1 to 2 lbs. (500 to 1,000 g), although apparently here in the western United States they are on the smaller end of the scale. Females can live up to 12 years, and males 8. Their nests, called dreys, are either platforms of sticks up in the tree branches in summer, or dens hollowed out from tree trunks in the winter.

I don't see them in the camphor trees much, despite the generous number of berries there at times, so it seems that they prefer the pines in the neighborhood, and possibly the magnolias.  The ground under this tree is littered at the moment with eaten cones and the hard scales that the squirrels have torn off to get at the seeds.

They are very playful, and sometimes three or four can be seen chasing each other up and down the trunk of the tree.  They also dash easily from tree to tree around the neighborhood, and use the phone and electricity wires as a kind of squirrely highway.