Song Sparrow and a Carpet of Greens

Our song sparrow is back! We heard it's unmistakable song for the first time yesterday and again today. In 2013 I noted in a notebook that I heard it the first week of February. This is a video posted by someone else on Youtube of its sweet song announcing the coming of Spring! 

The maps of its habitat shows that they are a year round resident here so maybe it is like the yellowthroat - here all year, but only sings it's song in the spring. Could it really be that they are just silent without song all those months?

The ground at O'Neill Regional Park was covered in a lush carpet of greens this past week. They grow, awakened by the rains, all reaching for the sun together in beautiful harmony. We saw cutleaf geranium, shepherd's purse just beginning to bloom and some nettle, wild cucumber in full bloom, signs of chaparral sweet pea, and many other old friends to look forward to this spring.

Wildflowers at Caspers

A short trek up Ortega Highway, just past the Tree of Life Nursery is Caspers Wilderness Park. It's a nice place off the beaten track, less than ten minutes past Ladera Ranch.  

Although we're in our third year of drought, wildflowers can be found if you're really looking for them.

blue eyed grass (sisyrinchium)

A very sorry looking filaree - an invasive plant. 

Pineapple weed, aka wild Chamomile (matricaria discoidea)

And here is the everlasting, it has the most wonderful scent. I once tried to bottle it, but foolishly used Olive oil instead of an oil with less of a scent and it didn't work as well as I hoped.

California Everlasting, aka Ladies' tobacco (pseudognaphalium californicum)

Shepherd's Purse (capsella bursa-pastoris)

Did you notice the heart shaped "purses"? And their mention in Robert Louis Stevenson's poem "The Flowers"

ALL the names I know from nurse:
Gardener’s garters, Shepherd’s purse,
Bachelor’s buttons, Lady’s smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.
Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames—
These must all be fairy names!
Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!
Fair are grown-up people’s trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.

Imagine a tiny fairy looking up at all these little plants!

Wild Cucumber, aka man-root (marah)

London Rocket (sisymbrium irio)

Parasitic mistletoe on sycamore (phoradendron macrophyllum)

Holes made by Acorn Woodpeckers

close-up of holes with acorns