The Dark Days of November and December

However you reckon it, night time hours are 14 hours long. With our inferior eyes (at least in darkness) and our limited hearing, we are creatures of daylight. But there are plenty of night hunters in the natural world who welcome the long nights. Roof rats, raccoons, opossums, skunks all begin their ‘day’ when the sun sets.

 

Above all, the owls are superbly adapted to being night hunters. Snoozing away the day, they wake up at dusk, ears and eyes ready to detect a faint rustle or the smallest small movement that indicates a possible meal.

 

The owl that most of us notice on the hill is that fearsome predator of the night – the Great-horned Owl. Often walking across the Vista parking lot, you’re apt to see one of these silent fliers launch itself from a high branch of a eucalyptus tree and with a few slow flaps of its broad wings cross to another high perch.

 

A pair of Great-horned Owls frequents the eucalyptus grove behind the Hall where a male and female often sing a duet – he with the lower series of hoots, she a few notes higher (though she like all owls is bigger than the male).

 

Great-horned Owls are “perch and pounce” hunters dropping down from their perch to seize their prey in their powerful talons. They are ‘equal opportunity’ hunters including in their diet a passing house cat if one is so unfortunate as to be within the owl’s range.

 

Because their young are slow to fledge, Great-horned Owls begin courtship and breeding as early as December.

The autumn and winter skies are not only dark, but unlike summer when fog often shrouds the hill, winter nights between rain storms are often clear. City lights rob us of truly dark skies, and children growing up in urban areas never see that loveliest of night sights – the Milky Way. But look to the east and there are always constellations to behold with the Orion rising over the hills in November followed by the faithful Sirius, the dog star, and the brightest star in the winter sky.

 

Beginning in October on the first Saturday of each month, LHS astronomers set up their telescopes on the plaza. One of the scopes in early November was focused on Jupiter, now the ‘evening star.’ Viewers could easily make out five of Jupiter’s 63 known moons.

The buckeye tree (Aesculus californica) growing in the Canyon next to Centennial Drive, is one of the first deciduous trees to loose its leaves. Unlike most deciduous trees which shed their leaves in the fall in response to shortening days and cool temperatures, native buckeyes drop their leaves in late summer to avoid the hot desiccating sun of September and October. The proper name is estivation or “summer sleep.” Unlike many California natives such as manzanitas and live oaks with their small thick leaves, buckeye leaves are broad and thin allowing the trees to loose too much moisture in the long, rainless summer of California.

 

Though there is much to praise about a fully-leafed out buckeye with its candelabra of blooming spikes in the spring, the structure of the bare tree has its own beauty with crisscrossing gray branches splotched with mustard-colored lichen. The hanging globes of russet fruit resemble bosc pears. And that’s not all. When ripe, the leathery outer cover splits open and a bright, shiny super-sized seed drops out. Carrying one of these beauties around in your pocket is one of those tactile pleasures. The smooth surface and irregular shape seems to conform so nicely to the palm of the hand that you can’t help but to reach in and massage it occasionally.

 

Once on the ground and after a few rains, an exploratory root escaping the tough nut that houses the living embryo, reaches out for a toe hold. With luck, the seed evolves into a new buckeye tree.