Using iNaturalist in Southern California, Part 2

It was great to see @finatic and @jaykeller again! They were kind enough to take me iNatting in the Tijuana River Valley and in Border Field State Park, both of which were wonderfully atmospheric places -- like going back in time to the Old West.

On my final weekend, finatic drove me to Mission Trails Regional Park (a terrific wilderness area) and to a canyon in La Jolla, where we met up with jaykeller. On that trip we were joined by @cedric_lee and @alex_bairstow. We walked, and then hiked, and then pushed our way through the vegetation as far up into the canyon as it was possible to go without using machetes. We saw a lot of interesting organisms, but we failed to find the small native land snail species that was recorded there back in 1953.

Alex had previously gone beachcombing with me at Cardiff Reef, where he had demonstrated his sharp eyesight and an impressive knowledge of the local shelled marine mollusk fauna, especially considering he had only started learning to identify them the previous fall.

Thank you BJ and Jay! Apart from everything else which was great to see and learn, it was fascinating for me to be introduced to three species of native Californian land snails -- extraordinary survivors in the chaparral, which is a very dry shrub landscape that most of the time is only moistened on-and-off by sea fog at night.

I relentless picked the brains of those around me -- and in a few days I learned more about Southern Californian natural history than I have done in the previous 40 years. Wonderful!

Posted on 30 de setembro de 2017, 12:13 PM by susanhewitt