Who are those bugs out there?

This time of year (Fall) the insects of the order Orthoptera begin their annual singing as evening falls. Most of this singing, as with humans, has to do with sex. The males of the three families, crickets, grasshoppers and katydids are thrumbing their forewings or legs to make the sound you hear. Many of the 300 species of Orthoptera in California produce sounds and they have hearing organs in their well-developed hind legs. In the case of grasshoppers, their ears are on the sides of their abdomens. Most of these bugs are good jumpers and those that can fly have two sets of wings. The forewing is leathery, long and not used for flying. 

Katydids and crickets make sounds by rubbing the bases of their forewings together. Grasshoppers do it by rubbing their big hind leg against their forewing. Some of the loudest bugs are tiny gossamer creatures you can see through like the snowy tree cricket which sings from the oak trees. They are very efficient at producing sound, considering that they must weigh a fraction of a gram.

Favorite Song Birds of the Canyon
(from Spring 99 Newsletter)

Part of the mission of the Lompico Watershed Conservancy is to protect wildlife habitat in the canyon. Among the most charming wildlife we commonly encounter are our wild birds. We are lucky to have a large number of species come to these forests to breed in the spring.

Since this article is written for the Lompico Watershed Conservancy, let's start with the bird that lives closest to the creek. The tiny Winter Wren will only be heard down low in the canyon near the stream. Some years the males sing all the way from February through to June. Their song is a very fast series of high-pitched trills which are strung together into a song, five to eight seconds long. Sometimes they will improvise these phrases for several minutes, especially when competing with another wren a little ways down the creek. This little bird is very hard to see and when you do see one, it is because you notice a quick darting motion. The Winter Wren is the color of redwood bark, which perfectly camouflages them in the shadows. These wrens live on insects and will put their heads underwater to catch aquatic bugs.

Bats of the Santa Cruz Mountains

This is the time of year (Spring) when bats become visible is the evening sky. They are coming out of hibernation or are migrating back here from their winter ranges farther south.

There are about ten species of bats that live in the Santa Cruz mountains. If you see a bat near your house that is relatively plump, it's probably a "large brown bat". Pipistrells, which as you might expect from their name, are tiny, weighing only a few grams. There are several bats from the genus "myotis" and we have freetailed bats, whose tails move independently from their wing membranes.

Bats are mammals from the order Chiroptera. This is quite an astonishing group of animals. They possess many of the more amazing adaptations found in the animal kingdom. For example, bats from the temperate zones of the planet (places that are cold in the winter and hot in the summer like the United States), either migrate or hibernate to survive the winter months.

Coniferous Trees of the Santa Cruz Mountains

The forests of Santa Cruz Mountains have a unique group of conifers or cone bearing trees which give the area's forests a dramatic grandeur. This mountain range contains the southernmost large stretches of forest dominated by Redwoods or Sequoia Sempervirens. The northern coastal canyons of the Big Sur Mountains are dominated by Redwoods but in Big Sur, Redwoods can only grow down inside the cool creek canyons which descend to the Pacific Ocean. Here in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Redwoods grow in nearly all of the watersheds. The largest trees are found near water courses and in cool areas on the northern facing mountain sides.

The Raptors of Islandia