Site Description

Site Description:

Location; 1750 Altadena Dr. Pasadena, CA 91107 (Eaton Canyon Natural Area)
Habitat: Chaparral
Site size: about 20 by 20 meters


            The area in which Bradley and I sat at classified to us as a somewhat different area to the chaparral. We were sitting in the shade under lots of oak trees and sat on a twisted, perhaps fallen tree. Just guessing by the whitish bark of the tree, I felt it was a sycamore, but it had peeling bark. The ground was littered with dead, dried leaves. The leaves were the kind of leaves that had a spiky tip. but were small in an oval shape. These leaves were most likely from a coast live oak. So, on the way to our site (about a quarter mile trip), we saw at first lots of prickly pear cacti. The prickly pear cacti were on what seemed like a dried riverbed or more plausible, just an ordinary trail branching out like a river with lots of tributaries. Once it got a little hot, we both went under some shade and noticed some whipple yucas which look like upside-down palm trees. About half-way through, we noticed lots of sycamores which are basically trees with white bark. Finally, when we were about 50 feet from our site, we had to go through a thick amount of cliff aster, a tall perrenial native of the chaparral. Once we got to the site, the only other identifiable plant was poison oak with its red leaves in bunches of three. Along with an abundance of plants, we saw many animals. On the way to our site, we saw no animals. However, when we were there, we heard two different types of birds, but we couldn't identify them. On the way back, we saw some animal tracks, perhaps from a rodent and some dung along with it. A little bit farther up the trail, we saw a small insect that reminds one of a grasshopper. Including that, we saw a gray tree squirrel scurry up a tree  Besides that, we saw two blue-bellied lizards doing "push-ups" (a sign to signal off intruders in their territory) in the sun and a rabbit scurry off into the bushes before we got a good look at it. Other animals we saw were two birds seeming to "fight" with each other, but they were probably doing a mating ritual. We could not identify their names. The final animal we saw was a blue jay perching on a tree. Overall, we had a success at Eaton Canyon with the biotics.