Lookout visit

Today, 6/14, I drove up with my parents-visiting from Oregon- and my
brother for their first visit to Hi Mtn. Lookout. Mike Stiles was also
there to take a look at all the work that has been done. Just as we
stepped outside from the visitor’s center downstairs an adult pair of
peregrine falcons flew by 50 yards away at eye level- a nice greeting
from the Huff’s Hole falcons, I presume. A few more seconds lingered
indoors and we would have missed them completely.

The butterflies are numerous around the lookout (so are the flies, so it
helped a light breeze was blowing today) and there are many
swallowtails, blues, and checkerspots flying about and ‘hilltopping”. I
saw several blues feeding at yerba santa flowers along Hi Mtn. road on
the stretch between the gate and the lookout, and deerweed and woolly
blue curls shrubs are also flowering in abundance roadside. Wild mustard
appears to be the more abundant ‘weed’ in the disturbed roadside border
this growing season compared to the yellow-star thistle invasion there
one year ago (perhaps those eradication efforts last summer helped to
prevent some reseeding of the thistle). The very small flowers of a
coffeeberry shrub growing near the water cistern were being visited by
numerous honeybees. It was a buggy kind of day.

Steve Schubert