I love seeing lizards and salamanders whenever I'm out in nature! I love the orange color of this one that seems to glow as well as the eyes that I think are really cool looking!
Yellow-eyed Ensatina (Ensatina eschscholtzii xanthoptica)
Redwood Regional Park
Oakland, CA
01-17-12
I had previously incorrectly identified this charming little one as a California newt (Taricha torosa) when I posted it, but have since changed the description.
Thank you to Ken-ichi for the correct ID, to scott.simono for concurring with him, and to Isa and Jessica from the EBRPD for vefifying the ID. =)
Explore #341, January 18, 2012 (Thank you Rita for letting me know).
EBRPD facebook photo of the day, January 19, 2012
© Sally Rae Kimmel. All Rights Reserved. Please contact me if you would like to use any of my photographs. All of my photographs are copyright protected. They are not to be used in any way, in whole or in part, copied, reproduced, downloaded, distributed and/or used in any form of media, publication or print including on the internet without my express written permission. This applies to all of my photos, whether or not this notice appears in the description, and whether or not there is a copyright or watermark on the photo itself.
Tags: Redwood Redwood Regional Park East Bay Regional Park Oakland, CA Yellow-eyed Ensatina Ensatina Ensatina eschscholtzii xanthoptica salamander
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My favorite capture of the day: Two Large Marble (Euchloe ausonides) butterflies on a Wild Radish (Raphanus sativus) wildflower blossom
In spite of their name, they're actually small butterflies that are only about 1 1/2 inches long. They're mostly a creamy white color on top, but as you can see, they're a mossy marbled pattern under their hind wings.
I hadn't photographed one of these before, so I was excited to get two in one photo, especially since I hadn't seen one land. My hours of patience out there finally paid off when two started fluttering together and I kept watching them and saw them land from a distance. I kept my eyes on where I saw them land. It was hard to spot where they were at first and then I saw them. It was windy too, but I was able to capture them together on a Wild Radish blossom in spite of the wind. I felt like I found a great treasure. =)
Briones Regional Park
Lafayette, CA
04-14-12
0229
© Sally Rae Kimmel. All Rights Reserved. Please contact me if you would like to use any of my photographs. All of my photographs are copyright protected. They are not to be used in any way, in whole or in part, copied, reproduced, downloaded, distributed and/or used in any form of media, publication or print including on the internet without my express written permission. This applies to all of my photos, whether or not this notice appears in the description, and whether or not there is a copyright or watermark on the photo itself.
Flickr Explore #363, April 16, 2012
Tags: Large Marble Euchloe ausonides butterflies butterfly mating butterflies Briones Briones Regional Park East Bay Regional Park Lafayette, CA
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Overwintering Ladybugs
Redwood Regional Park
Oakland, CA
01-17-12
Every winter here in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Oakland California, ladybugs overwinter at the Redwood Regional Park. This was my first time seeing them in person and it was an amazing sight! I have never seen so many ladybugs at one time! This was a very cold day, so they weren't moving around very much. There was still ice in the grass at the beginning of the trail that had not melted yet from the freezing temperature from the night before even though it was late afternoon. The dried thistle was covered with them! They looked like red berries and brought life back to this dried up thistle. This photo shows only some of them that I saw this day, but there were thousands more too! I took several photos of them, because I was so in awe of them.
Redwood Regional park is one of the East Bay Regional parks. It is just one of the many beautiful parks in the San Francisco Bay area that the public has access to. I hope that seeing this photo encourages the viewer to support and protect all of the beautiful local, regional, state and national parks, open spaces, preserves, museums, etc. that we are all fortunate enough to have available to us to enjoy, including the Academy.
(If anyone reads this and wants to see more photos of them, I have a set of 20 photos that I created on my Flickr photostream as well.)
Tags: Redwood Redwood Regional Park East Bay Regional Park Oakland, CA ladybug ladybugs overwintering ladybugs
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Overwintering Monarch butterfly on yellow flower
Ardenwood Historic Farm
Fremont, CA
01-13-12
I approached slowly hoping that one of the overwintering monarch butterflies would be on one of these flowers, (yellow preferred, but I would have been happy if it was on an orange one too!), but didn't want to get my hopes up. I was lucky (on this Friday the 13th) and there was one on my first choice of flowers! Now to get some shots before it flew away. It was 70 degrees and this was the only one on any flower there that I saw while I was there, so the butterflies that were away from the clusters (and there weren't many) were moving very quickly. I had hoped with the heat that there would be more flying around, but to my surprise, there weren't. I was so happy to get some shots of this beauty (some look like they've had a tough journey with torn wings, but not this one) before I got too close and it flew away, but I got the take off (see the last photo in the series below), so I was happy! =)
© Sally Rae Kimmel. All Rights Reserved. Please contact me if you would like to use any of my photographs. All of my photographs are copyright protected. They are not to be used in any way, in whole or in part, copied, reproduced, downloaded, distributed and/or used in any form of media, publication or print including on the internet without my express written permission. This applies to all of my photos, whether or not this notice appears in the description, and whether or not there is a copyright or watermark on the photo itself.
Tags: Ardenwood Ardenwood Historic Farm East Bay Regional Park Fremont, CA monarch monarch butterfly butterfly butterflies overwintering monarch butterfly butterfly on flower
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Clusters of Monarch Butterflies overwintering in the eucalyptus trees.
Ardenwood Historic Farm
Fremont, CA
12-27-11
Each year here in California, Monarch butterflies overwinter in clusters high up in the eucalyptus trees. It is an amazing sight to see! I didn't know until last year that they overwinter here in the San Francisco Bay area in a couple of the East Bay Regional parks near me. I have only seen them once before, many years ago, in Pacific Grove, California.
When the sun hit the butterflies and they started to warm up, some of them started quickly fluttering their wings and I was able to get some shots of them with their wings open. This was one of the photos that showed more "orange".
This is just one of the photos that I took of them at Ardenwood Historic Farm in Fremont, CA, which is one of the East Bay Regional parks. If anyone reading this wants to see more photos of them that I took, I have a set of photos of them on my Flickr photostream that you can view.
April 14, 2012:
Today I found out that this monarch butterfly cluster photo was "Image of the day" on March 19, 2012 on a blog page of Climate Central.
www.climatecentral.org/blogs/image-of-the-day-monarchs-me...
© Sally Rae Kimmel. All Rights Reserved. Please contact me if you would like to use any of my photographs. All of my photographs are copyright protected. They are not to be used in any way, in whole or in part, copied, reproduced, downloaded, distributed and/or used in any form of media, publication or print including on the internet without my express written permission. This applies to all of my photos, whether or not this notice appears in the description, and whether or not there is a copyright or watermark on the photo itself.
Tags: Ardenwood Ardenwood Historic Farm Monarch Butterfly Monarch butterflies Monarch butterflies overwintering Fremont, CA
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