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There was a play going on at the Mountain Theater on Mt. Tamalpais today, so the area around Rock Spring was quite busy. I noticed the gate at West Ridgecrest had opened early, so I took advantage of the opportunity to drive out that way before the usual opening time.
The light was good, giving texture to the landscape and brightening my spirits -- and then I was visited by a fawn. I heard its footsteps nearby as I composed the shot above, but I figured they couldn't be as close as they sounded. Ears are easily tricked. After snapping my photo I turned around to pack up my camera gear, and there was the spotted fawn who might have been startled by my look of surprise that she quickly turned and pranced away into the woods. The only other time I've experienced a fawn coming so close to check me out was years ago in the Yolla-Bolly Wilderness. That time, the encounter seemed so ethereal that I wondered if the fawn had really been as close as it seemed, so I stood up and saw the fawn's hoofprints in the dust just inches from the impression of my own rear end.
(Mapped)
When I walked over in the direction the fawn had gone I found this apparent burial site, a pet cemetery. I did not dig it up to find out if an actual critter was buried there, but I was surprised a coyote hadn't already done so. Walking back to the Jeep, I spotted a coyote walking sprightly along the road. He kept an eye on me as he passed but didn't change his lightly bouncing gait. I watched him continue quite a ways down the road before he finally turned onto a game trail and disappeared.
One of these days I'm going to find out what this grass species is called. (Spoke too soon. Doreen Smith just let me know it's Cynosurus echinatus, Crested Dogtail Grass.)
The spittlebugs are usually massed in a hard-to-photograph spot, so I took advantage of this chance to catch them in the open on a thistle stalk. These nymph froghoppers squeeze the spittle out their hind ends to keep them covered while they feed on their host plant, then emerge as adults to continue feeding on plants.
Lady ferns down by Cataract Creek.
Small azure butterflies, creekside denizens, drawn to moisture.
Banana slug climbing a rock, on its way . . . somewhere.
Near the end of my hike I found the most perfect dandelion puff (probably mountain dandelion) and couldn't resist photographing it. I dragged it back down into the woods to be in the shade, but it was still kind of windy even under the Douglas firs. After I finally got it photographed I let it be. It was just too perfect an orb to blow to smithereens.
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