True Nature Stories: 'Tis The Season

View of Mt. Tam from Coyote Creek

As the year winds down toward winter solstice with increasingly long and chilly nights, the mountain is already gearing up for its new-year revival of life.

What's that strange sound in the woods? It's the sound of flowing creeks.

Finally.

When I checked the trail cams last week I was determined to move them to a new location, but when I hiked out to the general area I had in mind, I couldn't find a specific spot that wouldn't be too exposed to off-trail hikers. I've been amazed several times in the past when the cams have caught people in unexpected places, and unless there are shoe or bike tracks it's not always easy to tell a game trail from an unofficial people trail. Not that it's a big deal if someone sees one of the cams, but part of the fun for me is finding places where only wild animals pass by.

Since I couldn't find a new spot I ended up taking the cams home. In reviewing some of my old footage I found a location that I'd forgotten about and wanted to stake out again, so yesterday I brought the cams back up.

After setting up the trail cams I poked around with the Panasonic FZ-80 and captured a nice fruiting of witch's butter (Tremella aurantia) that was busily parasitizing its usual host bracket fungus, Stereum hirsutum. As I ate the fruit and nuts I'd brought along for my lunch, I found a spot where I could hear lots of birds gathering their own lunch in the canopy of oaks, bay laurels, and Douglas firs. A beautiful townsend's warbler coaxed me into spending some time trying to photograph them.

One time I looked up and thought I saw a robin's red breast, but it was actually a red-breasted nuthatch which, like the townsend's warbler, probably spends its summers in the Sierra Nevada. I know we have year-round residents here on the coast, but it does seem like they are more abundant this time of year. Another "red-breasted" fake-out turned out to be a chestnut-backed chickadee. The FZ-80 was adequate for the job of capturing images, I guess, but only if you don't care too much about the details. The laws of physics probably prevent there being a small and light, easily portable camera that would deliver images to rival a good full-frame 35mm camera.

Besides frost on the boardwalk along Coyote Creek, the only other notable aspect of the bike ride was finding another road-killed squirrel in virtually the same place as the last one, but on the uphill side of the road. This one wasn't bleeding at all, or carrying a peppernut, but I did move it off the road for the safety of scavengers.