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| Acorn Woodpecker |
As I biked across the Golden Gate Bridge there were very few tourists afoot, as I would expect for this time of year, but I was surprised to encounter so few cyclists riding the other way. It was a beautiful Thursday morning and not particularly cold, but I practically had the whole span to myself. On the north side I was pleasantly surprised to see unusually large flocks of pelicans and cormorants resting on the calm water's surface in front of Fort Baker. They were all gone by the time I rode back that way in the afternoon.
The ride up the mountain was uneventful until I noticed that those crazy western azaleas had a few blossoms on them again. Their leaves were all autumn shades of red and yellow, yet a couple of them had fresh white flowers at the tips of their highest branches.
Farther up the road, between Bootjack and Pantoll, I passed a squirrel that had recently been hit by a car in the downhill lane. Since I had a safe place to pull over and there was very little traffic, I went to move it off the road so scavengers could feed on the carcass without themselves being endangered. When I reached the squirrel I was struck by the bright red stream of fresh blood that had flowed from its wound. Even more poignant were the broken pieces of a peppernut on either side of its head.
The sun angle was noticeably lower when I reached the Pantoll Road vista point I often stop at, and the first blades of green grass were infiltrating the brown hillsides of Bolinas Ridge. I locked my bike at Rock Spring and hiked out to my trail cams, and was disappointed to find the creekbeds still quiet. There were more or less continuous pools of water in some stretches, but the water wasn't flowing.
Near the Rock Spring tank, the dead Douglas firs that had been marked with yellow ribbons (see photo near the bottom of this post) had recently been cut down. The sound of chainsaws buzzed in the distance. I heard water running in the little well-like spring next to the trail and went to investigate. Sure enough, water was pouring gently from a pipe onto a bed of watercress. Suddenly I felt something like a tick crawling on my leg, and when I looked down to flick it off I saw what I thought was a ladybug. I had to put on my reading glasses to be sure, and when I did I saw that the ground was crawling with many other ladybugs. Had they been nestled in holes or beneath the bark of one of the felled trees? Some of them congregated on nearby plants and fallen branches, but for the most part they seemed to be milling about very loosely. I wish I could have been there early this morning to see if they had formed a larger aggregation like this in order to stay warm.
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| An acorn woodpecker takes stock of its pantry. |
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| Cut trees near Rock Spring. |
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| A quick count of the rings showed this section to be about my age -- over 60 anyway. |
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| A small aggregation of ladybugs. |
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| Buck deer at stream crossing. |
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| Two of three raccoons that foraged along the creek after some rain put more water in it. |
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| A gray fox stops to smell something of interest. |
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| This is a combination of two frames from the GardePro cam, showing how fast the coyote moved through the frame. The cam is set to snap two stills and a video, but the coyote was well out of the frame by the time the video started. |
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