As I stepped through the dry crisp grass, grasshoppers manically scattered to the left and right of the path like parting waves of popcorn. It is a grasshopper summer. Technically it is fall since we’ve passed the autumn equinox, but since it is still so hot, I’ll call it summer. As I looked at the shriveled plants, I figured it wouldn’t be a good plant ID trip. I wasn’t about to try to determine what those dried up flowers and crumbling leaves had once been.
Mt. Laguna is a lot closer to San Diego than Palomar but not as green and a lot drier. As we entered the park we noted the high fire risk warning. Usually we start our hikes at the first trail head north of I-8. We do a loop made up of a portion of the Sunset trail and then pass the “Water in the Woods” and strike across the fields on another trail that loops back to the trail head. This time, for variety, we started our hike from the Noble Canyon trail head, hiked along the Big Laguna Trail then took the Sunset Trail through the woods.
As we started walking, I noticed some of the pine trees had brown spots. I don’t know if it was from the heat or an insect or disease. A squirrel chirped from high up in a tree with the persistence of an alarm clock. Acorn woodpeckers swooped and squawked. There was dried mistletoe with green berries on pine trees. It was shriveled and orange instead of the huge leafy blobs of it we see in the canyons here. This is because they are two different species, Phoradendron bolleanum, which grows on junipers, cypress, and fir trees as opposed to the Phoradendron serotinum which prefers sycamores and oaks.
Lots of the plants had dried to pale gold and brown. One dried up bush had round berries. Some were almost black. I saw several more of these bushes around. Most had wilting leaves. These were choke cherries. I had seen a tree in Palomar but the cherries were bright red. The ones in Laguna had ripened to the dark, blackish red color. I wondered if they were edible since the trees and shrubs had so many. According to Chumash Ethnobotany, by Jan Timbrook, they are best eaten if mashed and dried. On a government plant site they were listed as toxic. This is because they contain cyanide in them (as do other trees in this family including apricots (which contain cyanide in their pits) but oxygen and cooking is supposed to take care of that.
Since it was mid day, the birds were mostly quiet with the exception of ravens, jays, and woodpeckers). Sometimes it seemed the only living creatures about were butterflies and grasshoppers. I almost stepped on a large snake (not a rattler) which had its tail sticking out across the path. Later on we ran into a rattler as well.
The Sunset Trail is so named because it follows the west ridge of the mountains, looking across and air and forests. The trail dips down into shaded pine forests and then up on a hot ledge lined with boulders and brush. Then it cuts back down through the forest and joins the Big Laguna trail at the Water in the Woods. The water levels of the pond were low and it wasn’t full of birds like it is in the spring when goldfinches, blue birds and water fowl dart around it. The Big Laguna water level was also low and seemed more of a soup of pond weed than a large lake. There were some coots towards the center but not the flocks of red-wing blackbirds of the spring.
As we walked along one end, we noticed some butterflies. At first I thought they were blues but R pointed out that their wings looked like Hermes Coppers, so they must have been coppers. Sure enough, they were Purplish Coppers. Rowshan was also delighted to find tiny frogs hopping around the grass on that edge of the lake. He picked one up. It had light beige skin with almost transparent stripes. Others were green. They were probably both Pacific Tree Frogs (Pseudacris regilla) which according to Wikipedia can change between brown and green depending on the brightness of their background. I walked ahead since it was so hot and I wanted to get into the shade.
Once again the path was full of grasshoppers. I tried to kick the grass ahead of me on the path so I wouldn’t step on any that didn’t leap out of the way fast enough. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many grasshoppers up here. Back at home, I did some research. I found the USDA site on grasshoppers. (Yes, there is a USDA site on grasshoppers). Along with a lot of other information, it featured a series of grasshopper hazard maps. These were created from information gathered the previous year and used to predict grasshopper outbreaks so farmers and other plant growers can plan accordingly. The middle of the country seems to perpetually be in a state of grasshopper outbreak. But CA tends to be grasshopper hazard-free… except in 2011 and 2012 there is a little circle of grasshopper hazard colors in the inland San Diego county region.
Wow! Scientists can predict when it is going to be a grasshopper year.
We noticed smoke in the distance and worried that there was a fire somewhere and a shift in the wind would blow it our way. We were at the farthest point from our car on the hike. However, I couldn’t smell smoke so either the wind was going the other way or maybe the fire was farther than the smoke seemed to suggest. The fire turned out to be much farther. When we got back to the car there was no sign of anything to worry about.
