GROWING UP FOREST WISE Mt. Baldy Environmental Education offers programs for every age and for every season MT. BALDY VISITOR CENTER Home Directions PROGRAMS FOR SCHOOLS Program Introduction Pre-school through Eighth Grade Programs High School Environmental Studies Forest in a Box / Visits to Your School SUMMER PROGRAMS FOR CHILDREN Forest Adventures Summer Institute PROGRAMS FOR ALL AGES Natural History Lectures Volunteering Donating A Birthday to Remember Facility Rental Walks on the Wild Side SCOUTING PROGRAMS VISITOR CENTER SERVICES Passes and Permits Trail Information SAN GABRIEL CANYON ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION CENTER Programs for Schools Programs for Adults Brian the Bighorn says: "Don't be sheepish. Come by and visit!"	Signs of the Seasons 29 SEPTEMBER 2005 Ladybugs! Ladybugs! Ladybugs! 21 SEPTEMBER 2005 It seems that fall color came over the weekend right on schedule with the autumnal equinox. Today, the poison oak is redder, the rabbitbrush yellower. Here and there on the slopes are blazes of bright yellow maple, but the main grove of maples at Manker has only a few yellow leaves yet.    I find green rocks and gray flowers in Big Butch Wash. The green rock is a form of the Pelona schist and the gray flowers, looking like small wooden roses, are mite galls on white fir twigs.    20 SEPTEMBER 2005 Today I witness the greatest of weather treats: the clash of two wet weather systems, a low from the cool Pacific meeting with warm monsoonal flow from the Gulf. All throughout the day, lightning blazes in the distance, thunder rumbles and showers, preceded by cold gusts of wind, fall. Silvery clouds billow up behind the ridges. 16 SEPTEMBER 2005 I find the native, white-flowered Indian tobacco blooming on Joatngna Trail at Lower San Antonio. Somehow that's very fitting. I've also found deer grass, a basketry plant here. Later I follow Bear Creek through the village. The acorn woodpeckers are abundant on the bigcone spruce near of the fire station today, not up the creek at "Old Glory" as I expected. Down behind the school yard, the best part of Himalayan blackberry, the large, central berry of the cluster, ripens, beckoning to be tasted. Bay trees, laden with fat, light green berries, lean across the path. Much to my surprise when I pull it apart, I find the berry is mostly seed, very little flesh. What pulp there is feels "soapy".    Next I walk with the rangers and the schoolchildren to the creek. Acorn woodpeckers claim a utility pole near the bridge. Curious about the use of these poles, I read that the woodpeckers select poles or trees where the vision is good and which make an echoing sound indicating soft wood, more easily excavated, for the storing of acorns. A coast horned lizard with ruffled scales colored white, beige and gray, lies in the sand, perfectly encrypted. Highlight of the day, however, is the sighting of eight bighorn sheep, their white rumps flashing in the sun as they cross over the ridge of Goat Hill and come down to water at San Antonio Creek. A sublime day full of surprises!    12 SEPTEMBER 2005 Pat guides me up Goat Hill to the community water tank. Along the trail I see white sage with wands of flowering stems now crimson, brilliant red berries on hollyleaf redberry, fallen yucca stalks and golden wild oats. An outcropping of metamorphic rock has lumps of moss, plates of lichens, blue spike-moss and bird's foot fern, all dry and tightly incurved in late summer's sun. We follow a small stream, presently dry, through a bay leaf tunnel. Smells so refreshing! Feels so cool! A pair of crested Phainopeplas call "whoit! whoit!" around a leafless bush. We look down upon the silky-black, red-eyed male with his white patches flashing as he flies into the sun.    8 SEPTEMBER 2005 Most all of the middle-elevation mountain birds are active at or near the Visitor Center bird feeders this morning: Band-tailed Pigeon, Acorn Woodpecker, Red-breasted Sapsucker, Steller's Jay, Mountain Chickadee, Oak Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, and Purple Finch. Later I find sociable Dark-eyed Juncos sipping water at the seep at the beginning of San Antonio Falls Road. Goldenrod and California fuchsia bloom along the roadsides. Northern white skippers feed on rabbitbrush. 6 SEPTEMBER 2005 Botanist friends and I explore Barrett-Stoddard Road today from Mt. Baldy Road to the gate. Although weather was predicted to be cool, it heats up considerably by noon. We spend much time overlooking the shaded stream trying to name the trees looking down from the top into the verdant Barrett Canyon ... round olive green shapes are canyon live oak, shiny green columns are bigleaf maple, plain medium green are white alder, dark green leaves with a few yellow ones are bay, long droopy arms on tall spires are bigcone spruce. Abundant blackberry vines cover over small canyons. Phainopeplas flock in mistletoe in dying canyon oak. Metalmark butterflies, the second brood of the year, rest on California buckwheat. Bird's foot fern and blue spike-moss curl up in rock crevices on the south-facing cliffs. We inspect seeds of bedstraw, bird's beak, peppergrass, California suncups, scarlet larkspur, Plummer's mariposa lily, all attesting to the magnificent show of springtime this past year.    AUGUST 2005 JULY 2005	BULLETIN BOARD Sept. 10, 9:00 am, Introduction to the Gabrielino / Tongva Culture at Mt. Baldy Visitor Center Sept. 20 at 9:00 am Walks on the Wild Side at Mt. Baldy Visitor Center Sept. 24 at 9:00 am, Fire Ecology Tour at San Gabriel Canyon View entire Calendar Signs of the Seasons Would you like to be added to our email event notification list? Send a message to: email AT mtbaldyeducation DOT org Mt. Baldy Weather
Email: info AT mtbaldyeducation DOT org | Web Site: http://www.mtbaldyeducation.org Mt. Baldy Visitor Center, P.O. Box 592, Mt. Baldy, CA 91759 Phone (909) 982-2829 (visitor information), (909) 982-2879 (education staff), FAX: (909) 931-7130