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SCV Outdoor Report

SCV Outdoor Report: Varmints

By: Wendy Langhans   What do Elmer Fudd and Spider-Man have in common?  (besides being comic book characters)    Answer- They both struggle against vermin.   Spider-man battles against Vermin, a genetically-altered humanoid rat, and Elmer Fudd is forever hunting that “wascally wabbit”, Bugs Bunny.   From a human perspective, vermin are defined as disease carrying rodents or insects.  An example of ...

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SCV Outdoor Report: A Huddle Around A Puddle

By: Wendy Langhans   A Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly drinking sweet nectar from flower Whenever butterflies stand still long enough for us to see them, they are most likely feeding on a brightly colored flower.  Butterflies use their long, tongue-like proboscis to sip the sweet nectar from deep inside the blossom.    But sometimes we can observe a group of butterflies ...

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SCV Outdoor Report: A Tale Of Two Cities

Story by: Wendy Langhans   Santa Clarita, California and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:  one city is twenty years old and the other is 325 years old.  But both cities have rivers running through them.  Every river is part of a larger watershed, an area of land where water collects and drains into small creeks, which flow into streams, then into rivers and ...

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SCV Outdoor Report: A Flash Of Lightning

By: Wendy Langhans A lightning strike in the Mojave. Photo by Paul Levine Last week, I was awakened just before dawn by a flash of light across my face.  As I nestled back into my pillow I heard the faint rumbling of thunder coming from the direction of the Antelope Valley.  Hmmm….thunderstorms….   I sat up in bed took a ...

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SCV Outdoor Report: Leaping Lizards! It’s Dancing Rattlesnakes!

By: Wendy Langhans [view:node_ad=5]The other day MRCA Ranger James Latham stopped by my desk.  He had a big grin on his face.  “I have the most fantastic photos!  These two rattlesnakes were dancing!  Right along the side of the road in plain sight.”   “Oooo”, I grinned back.  “Have you downloaded them yet?  Can I see?”   There they were ...

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SCV Outdoor Report: Invasion Of The Water Snatchers

Incredible! Invisible! Insatiable!  By Wendy Langhans A mature tamarisk tree can produce 500,000 tiny seeds That was one of the taglines from a 1956 sci-fi movie entitled “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. I think it also could be applied to the invasion of the tamarisk, a plant sometimes known as saltcedar, which grows as a shrub or small tree in ...

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SCV Outdoor Report: How Owls Hunt

By: Wendy Langhans Photos courtesy of Lilian Darling Holt I remember an amazing scene in one of the early Harry Potter movies, where a “parliament” of various species of owls descends upon the dining hall at Hogwarts, delivering air-borne messages and packages to the students.  Each owl somehow managed to drop their package to the right person while avoiding running ...

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SCV Outdoor Report: Make It Stick

By: Wendy Langhans [view:node_ad=5]When my daughter was young, I taught her how to bake cookies.  We learned that in order for the colored sprinkles to stick, we had to first brush the tops of the cookies with a mixture of egg white and a tablespoon of water. The same thing holds true for flowers.  Once a grain of pollen has ...

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SCV Outdoor Report: Feathers Tell A Tale

By Wendy Langhans This red tailed hawk displays blunt ended tail feathers and tapered wing feathers. Provided by: Lilian Darling Holt When you see a feather on the ground, have you ever wondered where it came from?  Was it a Red-tailed hawk or a Western scrub jay?  Did you ever wonder why that bird lost that feather?  Was it an ...

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