cary's Favorites

Apparent leucistic lavender morph Cal King Snake which is common in the pet trade but rarely reported in the wild. Several miles from a town and a mile from nearest building. Found while road cruising in the eastern Mojave. Same individual is here http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/6426996

coyote tobacco, Nicotiana attenuata, Sierra Nevada, elevation 1510 m (4955 ft). Also visible is sand bur (Ambrosia acanthicarpa) and mountain sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. vaseyana).

Uploaded from my Flickr site: https://www.flickr.com/photos/127605180@N04/

chaparral yucca, Hesperoyucca whipplei old fruiting stalks, White Mountains, elevation 1600 m (5245 ft).

This is a recently discovered northward range extension (or maybe more accurately, remnant of range contraction) for this species at the southern edge of the Great Basin in the White Mountains. Only this single very healthy plant was found despite multiple further searches of the area. The main range of chaparral yucca is in the southern Sierra Nevada and southwestern California chaparral, into northern Baja California.

Uploaded from my Flickr site: https://www.flickr.com/photos/127605180@N04/

Photos and observation by Jeremiah Small

"Strange to find a dead ringtail cat lying right next to the sombrero cistern in Pine Canyon. Strange, because I've never seen one alive, and strange because it was essentially intact, but appeared to have been bitten by something larger. I guess it was a day old, because it was starting to stink and had flies on it, but strange that nothing had scavenged it yet."