Tehachapi News

The last week of a mild spring in Tehachapi

By the time you read this, spring will have ended and summer will have officially started, marked by the summer solstice on June 21. It has been a pleasant and prolonged spring in the mountains and valleys of the Tehachapis, and there are still some baby animals and wildflowers visible.

I was driving late at night near the intersection of F and Mojave Streets in Downtown Tehachapi recently when several sets of eyeshine in an alley revealed the presence of animals. They didn’t look like cats and when I turned in for a closer look I could see that it was a mother skunk with three babies.

That fact alone is not unusual — I regularly see skunks and raccoons within the Tehachapi city limits, as well as gopher snakes, ground squirrels, cottontail rabbits, numerous bird species and other wild animals.

No, what made the skunk trio distinctive were the odd markings on two of the three kits. The mother had the typical Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis) pattern consisting of a black body with a narrow white facial stripe, a white cap and a white stripe on either side of her back that diverged down towards her hind legs. One of the babies looked just like the mama.
 

Unusual white fashion statement

The other two, however, each had a typical facial stripe but then almost their entire backs were white, as was each of their tails. They were beautiful,of course, with soft silky white hair on their backs and spiky white hairs on their tails.

Despite their penchant for digging and often living in earthen burrows with a shed or house floor as their roof, skunks manage to keep themselves fairly well-groomed and clean, and baby skunks are generally kept spotless by their mother.

These three skunk kits obviously had good fur hygiene and their dark hair was glossy black and the light areas were snowy white.

Mother skunks are patience personified as they try to herd their wandering babies, and the mom in the alley was typical as she gently but insistently nudged and cajoled her curious babies away from me and under a fence into a backyard. In a few minutes the family had vanished completely.

Striped Skunks are known for variations in their black-and-white patterns and some individuals may be almost entirely black and others mostly white, but those I photographed are the whitest ones I’ve ever seen personally. And right in our own downtown. . . .

A good year for some
California poppies in the Antelope Valley and other large wildflower displays may have been somewhat disappointing this year, but other species thrived with this spring’s combination of temperature and moisture. One of the species that did do well is the attractive Western Wallflower (Erysimum capitatum).

These beautiful wildflowers bear yellow to golden blossoms on stalks whose height may vary from 6 to 30 inches. Wallflowers have exceptional diversity in color, and plants growing in the same small colony may range from bright yellow like hot dog mustard to deep pumpkin orange.

Western Wallflowers love our oak woodlands and are one of the most common wildflowers growing on slopes amid the Blue Oaks (Quercus douglasii) that surround each of our valleys, but wallflowers may also be found at higher elevations in the yellow pine belt, which in our area is found in the vicinity of Tehachapi Mountain Park, Bear Mountain, Cummings Mountain and other places above 5,000 feet.

Western Wallflowers are biennials or short-lived perennials and my adopted Nana/neighbor Tootie Anderson dug one up that was going to be destroyed because it was in a fire road and planted it in her her Cherry Lane garden, where it bloomed for many years.

Wallflowers had an exceptionally good year in Tehachapi this spring and I know that many of us enjoyed their sunny yellow displays.

A shy little desert snake
My brother George is reptile enthusiast who regularly spends night hours in arid and desert areas near Tehachapi looking for snakes and lizards. He recently encountered a diminutive little reptile known as a Desert Night Snake (Hypsiglena torquata deserticola).

These are relatively common snakes found in many arid habitats, including mixed chaparral and sagebrush areas, but they are especially fond of rocky outcroppings and areas with abundant boulders and stones. Because they are mostly nocturnal they are seldom seen, and even when they are spotted crossing a road at night they probably mistaken for baby gopher snakes.

Desert Night Snakes tend to be the same color as the substrate where they live, and may be varying shades of tan, grayish or light brown depending upon where they live. Regardless of their overall coloration they usually have a dark stripe running from their mouth past each eye and a couple of large dark blotches behind their head.

They eat mostly small lizards, eggs, frogs or invertebrates and their saliva is actually mildly venomous, though they don’t have fangs and pose no threat to humans. They are quite docile, mild-mannered snakes.
Now that spring has passed and summer is here there is a whole new host of observations and natural phenomena to experience in the Tehachapi area. Enjoy them.

Have a good week.
 

 
If something seems a little different about these two baby skunks, you’re observant: instead of having two white stripes on a black back, their entire backs and tails are white, an anomaly I’ve never seen as pronounced as it is in these two.

The mother skunk (left) and one baby were patterned normally, while the one at right and another littermate were mostly white. The skunk family was spotted strolling in Downtown Tehachapi recently.

This Western Wallflower growing near Old Town Road was one of many that did well in Tehachapi this spring.

This Desert Night Snake is a small nocturnal reptile that feeds mostly on lizards and their eggs.

Smaller than you thought? With a penny for comparison, you can see just how diminutive these little snakes actually are — this one was about the size and length of a #2 pencil.

Photos by Jon Hammond