Weekend Outing: El Dorado Nature Center, Long Beach

I'm determined to visit every place in L.A. with Nature in the title between now and May to take advantage of the spring-ness of spring.

Today we hit the El Dorado Nature Center, which features 2.25 miles of trails and a sweet old-timey nature center. This park is great for kids, because it's completely controlled nature. Lots of junk species like mallard ducks and squirrels and slider turtles, lots of flat paths that are great for strollers and toddlers, and very little wildness and/or danger.

Jackson managed the quarter-mile track by himself, and then I carried him most of the way around the one-mile self-guided nature trail and we learned about tree names like "alder" and "oak." ("Oak" made him bust out Okie-dokie-artichokie from LeapFrog Letter Factory, LOL.)

J loved the nature center, because there were owls in the gift shop and they had a great touch table of bones, antlers and horns, which is something that I haven't seen at other museums. This was a nice controlled hike in Long Beach's great El Dorado Regional Park and since it was just a dash (OK, a long dash) down the 405, we'll do it again. The only downside was that it costs $7 to get in to park, but I suppose that's often the case with many nature areas.

Where the Wild Things Are

• A monarch butterfly was "puddling" (drinking water and minerals) in the backyard early Saturday morning. Hopefully she found the scarlet milkweed next to the brush pile and laid a few eggs before going on her way.
  

• There was a gray bird grasshopper—Southern California's largest native insect at four inches long—in the front yard. I disturbed it by accident and it flew across the yard but I found it again hiding out under the doorknob to the back gate.

• The side yard has been colonized by at least five adorable woolly bear caterpillars that will turn into garden tiger moths before too long. They are chomping away at the weeds so they are more than welcome to stay as long as they want. (Not that I wouldn't welcome them if they were eating all the veggies too.)

• I let two of the broccoli heads bolt and the female Valley carpenter bees are absolutely in love with the yellow flowers.

• Found a little green katydid living in the weed I call horseradish that may or may not be horseradish.

• Some kind of orb weaver spider was spinning her web in the blackberries the other day, and lots of spiders that make hammock-looking webs also seem to have made a good home there.

• A couple of weeks ago a beautiful brown dragonfly took a little time out of his day to do some sunbathing on a sycamore twig; there were several other dragons buzzing about over the weekend. I believe it's about dragon season...

• I believe I saw a male lesser goldfinch mixing it up with the house finches and house sparrows the other day. He was perched on the top branch of the sycamore. Even if it is dying (and I maintain it's just napping), the sycamore is a wonderful bird perch.

• The neighbor's bougainvillea continues to attract exquisite yellow swallowtails.

• I saw my first green fruit beetle of the season this weekend. In fact, he was quite enthusiastic about spending time with me. He flew into the car and was quite adamant about wanting a ride, but I finally coaxed him out. Love these guys: Iridescent green and always rumbling loud like B-29 bombers.
  

• In addition to all of the above, a slew of the usual suspects: honeybees, hummingbirds, spiders, crickets, hoverflies, European paper wasps, ground beetles, ladybugs, squirrels, finches, doves, scrub jays and more.
  

• Stumbled across a Southern alligator lizard the other day. I suspect he stops by to snap up crickets when he can. There's a water dish in the herb garden that's pretty well-shielded and I like to think he lives under the herbs and drinks there when I'm not looking.

I believe that the wildlife web I'm trying to foster will only get richer by the year. Every season that the creatures have water, food, shelter and nesting resources available to them is another season that a new species can arrive and set up housekeeping. Larva are placed into the soil one year, they hatch the following, and then they themselves become prey perhaps of another species. I'm also adding new food plants and microclimates every month, so who knows who might be attracted next. I hope and expect that next summer will be have even more species vacationing or making a home in the gardens around our house.

Wildlife update: Put up a bird feeder for the finches (those things know how to sing!) and got some kind of small bird of prey as well. I think it was a peregrine falcon (common in the city) but my brother swears there's no chance. Also, earlier this week while I was watering, I flushed out an alligator lizard friend! Missing a tail, this one was, and I think he might have been the one who was around last year, although I could have sworn I found that one's skeleton under the sage last winter. Maybe it this is that one's interdimensional twin, who has traveled back through time and space? Suffice to say, delighted to have him, vendetta and all...

You know what I'm doing right now? I am FREAKING out. Why?! I found a salamander in my yard. EEEEEEEeeee! This is coolest thing since the mouse and the lizard before that. I really do have to start marking these things down. Googling reveals it is a garden slender salamander, and it probably likes the brush pile and all this rain we're having, not to mention my many slugs. I am so happy. Sigh. This is such a wonderful reinforcement of all the stuff you read in books about how if you don't eff with the environment too much it will balance itself out. I've been reading about natural slug control lately, and I keep sighing deeply when I get to the part where it says if you don't run them off "lizards and salamanders and frogs" will eat them. And I'm always like, "Where am I going to get a frog?!" Whoda thunk I could find a salamander in Culver City. Anyway, this is making me so damn excited. Off to kill more slugs now, but not too many. Gotta leave some for my new friend Rusty...