Oh no, we’re running low. That’s a poem, but it’s true. Please send in your wildlife photos if you have good ones. Where, for example, has Athayde Tonhasca, Jr. gone with his instructive biology + photo stories.
Well, today we do have photos—a group contributed by ecologist Susan Harrison from UC Davis. Her captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
A hunt for red in October
Here on the West Coast, autumn foliage seldom gets more chromatically intense than yellow to rusty orange. But the arrival of fall around Davis, CA, is heralded by piles of brilliant red tomatoes along the roads. These fruits have struck asphalt upon falling off of trailer-truck bins 10 feet high traveling at highway speeds, and yet many of them remain unbroken. For this miracle we can thank the crop scientists who, in the wake of 1960s farmworker shortages, created a mechanically harvestable tomato that transformed the farm landscape. You wouldn’t want these tough beauties on your salad, but they are cannery fodder:
Contemplating the annual tomatocalypse made me wonder if equally vivid reds could be found in nature at this time of year, when most flowers, fruits, and bright-plumaged birds are gone from northern California and southern Oregon. It took both some searching outdoors and some resurrecting of past photos, but here’s what I found.
Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) on a granary tree:
Lewis’s Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis), a species that often looks black, and is surprisingly hard to catch flashing its full colors in the sunlight:
Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus):
Red-Breasted Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus ruber):
Spotted Towhee (Pipilio maculatus) with devilish eyes:
Red-Eared Sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans); the large female was being courted by the smaller male, who kept swimming in front of her and waving his claws in her face:
California Fuchsia (Epilobium canum), a fall-blooming favorite of hummingbirds and gardeners:
Manzanita (Arctostaphylos manzanita) stem, with live bark surrounding a lichen-covered dead patch, illustrating how the slippery red bark may be effective at preventing the attachment of other organisms (lichens, insects, fungi…):
Manzanita berries, the bright color of which seems puzzling since the seeds are thought to be mainly dispersed by mammals, which have monochromatic vision; I’ve spared you the ubiquitous sight of berry-packed coyote droppings:
Black-Tailed Deer (Odocoileus hemionus) fawn, eating admittedly non-native apples:
I love this post! Every photo is wonderful with great information. I love the tomatoes in the first photo and the granary tree is a work of art along with the artist.
Thanks so much! The day is off to a good start after seeing this post.
Living in the Sacramento Valley for many years I am all too familiar with tomatoes on roadway shoulders and freeway off ramps. Your wonderful photo makes this annual vegetable litter into a piece of artwork. Love the term tomatocalypse.
Thank you for your beautiful photos, as a bird watcher I am envious of your ability to capture such pictures.
+1. Tomatocalypse! Excellent tomato breeding story. Thanks, as always, Susan.
Especially love the woodpeckers, which I know from experience can be very difficult to photograph well. I used to gather spilled tomatoes to eat (yech!) during my cash-poor graduate school days in Davis.
Wow! Were the tomatoes as flavorless as they say in the linked article? I had college roommates who regularly gleaned the local peaches, olives, and oranges (the latter were pilfered from suburban front yards), but I don’t recall that they made use of the spilled cannery tomatoes.
I’m ashamed to admit that I too occasionally “harvested” a few peaches and oranges from local Davis trees.
[And I also ate a great many crayfish and trout that I caught in Putah Creek!]
To h*** with ashamed! If memory serves, the trick with peaches was to visit the orchards just after they were irrigated. Fruit that landed in the nice soft mud was delicious and would have gone to waste if not gleaned. Ah, the good old days…. 🙂
They may be flavorless, but living downwind of a cannery in the northern San Joaquin Valley, I wouldn’t say they’re odorless. I often find that as I’m finishing a bike ride, I’m hungry for some pasta and red sauce.
I also remember when Davis smelled of tomato soup on warm fall nights…
Was missing these – a delight to read!
Nice pictures. Such a waste of tomatoes! I’d definitely get out of the car and pick up a bag or two.
And those turtles! The male doing what males do.
And finally, that deer eating the apple. Our neighbor planted three apple trees a couple of years ago. He tends them lovingly and the apples they produce are huge! A few weeks ago I caught three big mule deer feasting on the trees. Interestingly, they seemed to be eating the leaves, not the apples! It was quite a surprise to see those deer moving through our built-up suburban neighborhood.
Oooh, if I lived in Davis right now, I’d be eating spaghetti al pomodoro for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And if there was an occasional truck shedding sprigs of basil, my happiness would be complete.