Irrevocable Annuality

With the early autumn rains bare patches in older deteriorating lawns frequently are filled in with annual bluegrass - Poa annua. It is paler green than most of other grasses, and by mid-spring it is mostly dead and turning straw colour. Thus, its annuality is irrevocable in spite of Loving Tender Care (LTC) bestowed on it. It may interfere with other grasses coming up. During close observation one can often notice a number of minute foldings near the base of the leaf blade. For your information Poa pratensis s a well-known Kentucky bluegrass. Poa is a very large genus with about 500 species worldwide.

Discourse about House Finches

Old time birders like me will remember this bird known as linnet. It didn't take long for the AOU (American Ornithologists Union) to become aware that one can not use one name for two different organisms in the same language. In Europe, especially in England, there is a similar and related bird called linnet. So, our bird had to be given a new name. Since this bird frequently nests in and about houses on crannies and vines the Committee chose House Finch for its name.
Going back to the early years of taxonomy a German Zoologist Phillipp Ludwig Statius Muller has described and given the Latin name to this bird: Carpodacus mexicanus, in 1776, and this name is translated into English as: Mexican fruit-biter or Mexican fruit-pest (carp from Greek meaning a fruit, and dakos also from Greek - noxious animal, from daknien - to bite). The House Finch is a bird of Western North America, but it has been migrating eastward and it is rapidly becoming more common in New England, and there it is often considered to be a nice little song bird, because it is not numerous. The California Department of Food and Agriculture in 1974 has reported that the total damage of all bird species to commercial crops in California was $12.75 million, and there is no doubt that significant part of this damage was because of House Finch.
There is a lot more what I would like to include in this post, however the wikipedia article on House Finches is very complete, and I support its accuracy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Finch

Hyperglycemia in cedar waxwings

Many active birders have noted that cedar waxwings had been found on a ground in a temporary torpor after eating Pyracantha berries, which are high in sugar. It is generally has been referred to as to be drunk from alcohol in the fermenting berries of overripe Pyracantha. This is untrue. The fruit is internally aseptic, and yeast that is responsible for fermentation process will not develop in lack of moisture. Hyperglycemia has been noted in various animals, even people can get dizzy and fade with too much sugar. A possible explanation concerning the waxwings is that their normal diet during nesting and rearing young depends on insects, which are high in protein and low in sugar. Their nesting takes place in the northern country, where berries are not available until late in the autumn. When they arrive far south from their breeding habitat, the insects are scarce and they resort to these berries, which are common throughout much of Southern California. Pyracantha is one of the most readily available foods during this time of the year in urban regions.

Little known way of seed dispersal - regurgitation

We all know that plants develop seed dispersal mechanisms in numerous ways, such as: wind dispersal, hooks on seeds, fleshy delicious fruit, etc. (see Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_dispersal), but there is one more way that often remains unobserved, when small fleshy fruits contain seeds with hard indigestible coat are eaten by small passerine birds. The fleshy part is digested in the stomach, while the seed is not. The lower alimentary canal is that small that seeds would not pass as part of the feces, so regurgitation, following the digestion process, is the only way of their elimination. Plants that use this seed dispersal mechanism are: Pyracantha, Washingtonia palm, Lonicera (?) - honeysuckle, and probably numerous others. If anybody knows other plants, please put a note on my blog in comments section. The birds that I have observed personally with seeds falling from their mouth (that occurs when they are resting and presumably digesting their most recent meal of fruit) are: cedar waxwings, mockingbirds, and bluebirds.

A close look at an interesting sunflower: Baccharis

At first glance Baccharis does not seem to be a sunflower, because talking about sunflowers one thinks of ray flowers. But it is a member of family Asteraceae (see general information about genus Baccharis on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccharis).
Male and female flowers are situated on different plants, and this condition is referred to as dioecious (from Greek - two households). The difference between male and female flowers is easily recognized. The mechanism of pollen dispersal within the sunflower family depends upon the elongated pistol that pushes through the anthers ring carrying the pollen to the surface (such flowers are called synantherous: 5 stamens are united by their anthers forming a ring). To facilitate the movement of pollen to the surface in male flowers of Baccharis an unusually large vestigial pistol at time of flowering elongates through the anthers ring. That's why male flowers look like female flowers carrying large pistol (the only function of which is to deliver the pollen) and confusing an untrained person. The female flowers have a comparatively minute, but functioning pistol (see the picture: male flowers on the left, female - on the right).

Another distinctive feature of Baccharis salicifolia (mule fat) is the presence of 2 lateral veins parallel with the midrib (see the picture).


Baccharis salicifolia has a conspicuous gall forming Eryophyid mite. Small galls are distributed over the leaf (see the picture below).