Velella's Second Wave

 

Wrack Line of Velella

A second wave of Velella velella washed up onto Ocean Beach overnight. It's kind of amazing that these immense strandings aren't catastrophic for the species. I was also surprised that the bounty was being disregarded by shorebirds and occasional scavengers like crows and ravens. At sea, their predators include ocean sunfish, pelagic snails, and nudibranchs. An interesting tidepool predator of Velella is described at The Natural History of Bodega Head.

Lines of Velella Below Sutro Baths

Note the stranded by-the-wind sailors in the pool at the bottom of the frame. New lines of the stranded animals spread south along Ocean Beach, close to the water's edge. Older and denser lines are higher up the beach.

These stranded riders of the high tide are still fresh enough to have retained their blue coloration.

I spotted this black-crowned night heron yesterday at Blue Heron Lake but forgot to include it in yesterday's post (which included an April Fool's joke).

The heron fluffed its feathers before re-entering the water. Apparently it was looking for a place to rest in concealment, as it eventually ducked out of sight behind some shore vegetation.

Yosemite High Country This Morning
(There was snow on the valley floor as well.)

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Die Rotschulterstärling

 

Red-winged Blackbird, Elk Glen Lake

I'm not into opera at all really, although I enjoyed Götterdӓmmerung (The Ring Cycle), and I was surprised to learn that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's most famous opera, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), is about making animals happy ("Tamino plays his magic flute. Animals appear and dance, enraptured, to his music." -- Wikipedia). A lesser-known Mozart opera, Die Rotschulterstӓrling (The Red-winged Blackbird), is based on an occult Masonic Lodge drinking song in which the blackbird symbolizes enlightenment.

I stumbled onto a few of these small flies near Mallard Lake, and they reminded me of the March Flies I've seen on Mt. Tamalpais. Although this isn't the same critter, I believe it is a member of the Bibionidae, the March fly family.

The large yellow iris are finally blooming at the west end of Mallard Lake.

I caught this hummingbird gathering cattail fluff and managed to get off this one shot before it flew away.

At the other end of the lake I found this much more sedentary hummer who remained on his twig every time I scooted a little bit closer. This was about as close as I could get without stepping in the little creek.

Unfurling Cycad Frond

Apparently I was being rude by staring at this red-shouldered hawk. At first I thought it was setting down its second foot, which had been warmly tucked into its feathers, to get a better purchase on the branch in heavy winds. But then he turned his back to me.

There was some kind of frothy stuff being exuded by the big oak at Elk Glen Lake, and a honeybee buzzed close to it, so I thought it might be some kind of sweet sap. But then this yellow-rumped warbler swooped in, and I wondered if it had been going after the honeybee, or if it too was interested in the sap.

Red-winged Blackbird in Mating Display

While I was watching the blackbirds I spotted this Allen's hummingbird on a branch poking out of the top of a large twinberry bush, although the branch itself is not part of the twinberry. 

A female red-winged blackbird was gathering nesting material, and I watched her weaving the material into her nest (too deep in the rushes to get a good shot). She was wrapping some of the material around a stalk to which the nest was attached. Pretty clever work, and again I am left amazed by nature's innate intelligence.

Crane Fly Resting on California Lilac

Cloud Drama With Juniper Crown

The bumblebee was nectaring on the California lilac down by the bison paddock, and also hitting the California bee plant flowers (Scrophularia californica). I'd love to have photographed them on the bee plant, but the tiny flowers were shaking wildly in the strong winds.

I was on the south side of the paddock today, checking out the nest boxes, when I spotted this guy and wondered if it was Sunny Allen. This perch was much sturdier than the pokeberry on the other side of the field.

I saw this red-shouldered hawk swoop onto the branch as I was riding past North Lake and pulled my bike over to check it out. Another photographer (with a full-frame camera) saw me point my lens and asked if I'd seen something. I pointed out the hawk, who soon pounced on something on the ground below.

The ground cover of grasses and other greenery was so high that you couldn't see the hawk. You could only see grass shaking where he was. I hoped to photograph him when he popped out, but I missed it and only caught the photo above when he landed on a nearby branch. The guy with the better camera had better luck. Unfortunately for the hawk, it didn't catch whatever it had been interested in.

When I spotted this vehicle carrier steaming into the Golden Gate I figured it was full of some of the last non-tariff cars that'll becoming to town for a while. (Yesterday I saw a new-car license plate on a yellow Lamborghini, a $275,000 car....) The ship is the Liberian-flagged Delphinus Leader.

Snowy Egret Perched in a Redwood at South Lake

I'm pretty sure these puffballs weren't showing yesterday. I ride the same route pretty much every day, and these stood out too much to miss. I wished I had a knife to slice one in two to show the gleba, but my Clipper Card served well enough.

I finally caught an egg in the nest of the pied-billed grebe at Blue Heron Lake.

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Passing Storms

 

Passing Storm, Ocean Beach

A couple of minutes after snapping the photo above, I was pulling rain pants out of my knapsack. I was glad I'd brought them because there was nowhere to take cover.  The breakwater overhang, where I took refuge once before, didn't work because the wind was blowing the rain everywhere.

As soon as I had all my rain gear on I stepped out onto the beach to enjoy the passing squall. It was windy, but nothing like yesterday. The larger shorebirds like marbled godwits and whimbrels were farther south, so I planned to observe the sanderlings close by. 

On the way to the water's edge I discovered more by-the-wind sailors, some of which seemed to be abandoning ship. It looked like the blue animals were able to release from their chitinous sail enough to gather in a small puddle of life-giving water. With the tide coming in, maybe they had a chance of surviving until the ocean could pick them up again.

I was surprised to see this plant growing all by itself on the Sunset Parkway. At first glance it looked like Chinese Houses, but PlantNet tells me it's Moroccan Toadflax (Linaria maroccana). Both are in the same family, and both have been moved out of Scrophulariaceae into the plantain family, Plantaginaceae. So many changes since my early 1980s botany classes. Morphology has been replaced by genetics to group plant families by their evolutionary lineage.

A few groups of brown pelicans made their way south, gliding into the wind.

While little sanderlings foraged on the beach, Mt. Tamalpais came out from behind a thick dome of clouds. By the time I got home about an hour later, it was covered again. 

Velella velella, with the colony puddling into a tiny puddle of water to stay alive.

That slight depression in the sand is a lifeline for the colony of hydroids (or perhaps a single large polyp). It eats zooplankton but also harbors photosynthetic algae that produce additional nutrition. Each colony is either all-male or all-female and reproduces by asexual budding, creating tiny medusae which sink up to 1,000 meters below the sea surface where they reproduce sexually, creating larvae which then rise up to the surface to develop their sails.

Partly Exposed Sand Dollar

Probing Sanderling

Billowing clouds at the aft end of the storm squall.

Strolling Sanderling

Sanderling Catches a Mole Crab

Unlike the bigger shorebirds, sanderlings can't just down a whole mole crab, so they have to pull off little bits at a time.

Stopping by the bison paddock on my bike ride, I noticed a male/female pair of Western bluebirds that seemed to be inspecting a nest box.

The tree swallows were not amused, and they chased off the bluebirds.

I hadn't seen Sunny Allen in a while, figuring it has been too windy for him to hang onto his perch on a dried stalk of pokeberry bush.

Although he did manage to climb aboard, he didn't stay long. It looked a little like riding a bucking bronco.

I looked around and saw that he sometimes perches on top of the chain-link fence, or even on the rope fence that the swallows often use.

Tree Swallow Sitting Near Nest Box

This one appeared to be very excited about something.

The pied-billed grebe was still on her nest today, and it looks a little more built-up than before.

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Shore Life

 

Marbled Godwit & Whimbrel Fly Into The Wind At Ocean Beach

The wind was blowing fairly hard out of the south, pushing me and my bike at 13-15 mph along the Upper Great Highway (the as-yet unnamed Prop. K park) with no pedaling necessary. I wanted to ride the whole length of Fogpatch Park (my pick for a name) without fighting a headwind, so I rode into Forest Hill and West Portal, then down Sloat (with a detour through Stern Grove) to arrive at the south end of the beach near the zoo.

Calla Lilies, Nasturtium & Eucalyptus in Stern Grove

Octopus Sculpture at Sloat & Great Highway

Beach Primrose & Ice Plant

Giraffe Sculpture

One of a handful of murals along the route.

There was a decent group of mostly whimbrels, with a few marbled godwits, foraging on the shoreline near Noriega Street, so I locked my bike to check them out up close.

All the shorebirds were slowly working their way south, into the wind.

Thanks to the cloudy sky and wind-blown sand, there were few people with dogs on the beach, leaving the birds to work in peace. 

The whimbrel tried a few times to steal any mole crabs caught by the marbled godwit, charging toward the bird when it pulled its beak up from the sand. It soon gave up after the godwit repeatedly came up empty.

Sandy Beak

A marbled godwit steps away from the foam.

A whimbrel comes up empty, as all the shorebirds do, many more times than it actually strikes a crab.

A marbled godwit swallows a mole crab.

Whimbrel in Sudsy Windrows

Out for a jog in the blowing sands.

A whimbrel makes a gentle landing, beak to the wind.

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