The latest update from Mt. Tam State Park is still, as I write this, the one from way back on May 1. Yes, it seems like the first of May was a long time ago. While I remain hopeful that they'll open the mountain to vehicle access this month, I'm glad my two-battery ebike system can get me up there in the meantime. I rode up on Sunday morning, leaving the house at about 9 o'clock.
View of the Marin Headlands from the cyclist's side of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Nice to see that Sausalito was ignored by looters.
I reached Mt. Tam at about 10:45, which makes the ebike trip about one hour longer than driving up in my car. The yellow mariposa lilies (Calochortus luteus) are now in bloom. I didn't see any just a week ago.
Even though I had only a week's worth of material on the wildlife cams, I wanted to check up on them since I'd placed two of them in slightly different spots. I'd also set them to shoot very brief six-second videos in addition to capturing still frames. Two of the cams were loaded with Eneloop Pro batteries and had plenty of juice left, but the third cam, loaded with regular Eneloops, was almost out of juice already. I ordered another eight-pack of the Pros today.
Unfortunately, I'm getting just a bit too close to the animals with this camera placement.
In case you weren't sure what that critter in the still shot was, here's a frame-capture from the video.
And one more.
A composite with Buck and Gray Fox.
Another composite with Fawn and Jackrabbit. I actually saw the fawn and its mom live and in person when I was up there on Sunday. So cute. They were right on the edge of a small meadow, staring at me. By the time I got my phone out, the camera app on, and the 3X "telephoto" dialed in, the deer had slipped into the forest, out of sight.
I was disappointed to see that my only bobcat of the week zipped through the frame before the camera's trigger engaged. I had it set to fire three frames, and this was the first. The next two, as well as the following video clip, were blank. I have the least expensive model, and the specs on that page don't even mention the trigger speed. Elsewhere I've seen it advertised as half a second, which is more than twice as slow as a similarly priced Bushnell, which triggers in two-tenths of a second. Normally I don't place the cams so close to a cross-trail because of the slow trigger speed, but I am actually hoping with this placement to catch critters walking toward the camera.
I was really impressed with how green everything still was in the woods on May 31st. The forest floor was still damp enough that the leaves didn't crunch underfoot.
A few wild turkeys foraged in the grass next to the Rock Spring parking lot.
About a half-minute smartphone pan of the forest with birdsong.
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