An evening visit to Castaic Lake

The annual pass to Castaic Lake that I bought last year expired, making it much harder to justify brief trips to the lake for observing wildlife. I'm not re-purchasing an annual pass when I'll only be here another 2 months and too busy to spend time at the lake, so I waited until after sunset to go to the 24 hour fishing pier and spend a brief period exploring the lake shore. It was too hot to be out during the day anyway!

The main purpose of my visit was to see what I could find in the lake at wading depths. I saw a number of small fish resting in the shallows, but there was no visible algae growing, and I didn't see any Hydra on the rocks either. Water samples held up to my head lamp contained copepods but no Daphnia, though I have only seen Daphnia here during the day.

As I was getting ready to return to the car, I spotted some spiders beneath a tree and stopped to watch them. As I did, a small creature that I initially took to be a very long millipede crawled up and began exploring my foot. It quickly decided I wasn't a good hiding place and moved over to a tree root instead, when I suddenly realized it wasn't an invertebrate. I bent down and snagged a couple pictures of the adorable little snake, but decided not to bother it by fishing it out to get a closer look.

That inspired me to do a bit more exploring, and I found many actual invertebrates around the lake, mostly wolf spiders. It was a very pleasant way to spend the evening, and it was wonderful to be able to do some observing after dark when it was a reasonable temperature out. If I liked hot weather, I wouldn't be moving to Seattle!

Posted on June 12, 2022 04:45 PM by wildnettle