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| Beautiful Morning at Ocean Beach |
It was a joy and a relief to wake up to sun and clouds this morning instead of another day of heavy fog. I couldn't believe it was already 64 degrees when I headed out the door at 8:30.
As I visually scouted the shoreline at Ocean Beach I didn't see any shorebirds to capture my interest, nor did I see any sign of another stranding of by-the-wind sailors. Only when I later biked down to the Cliff House was I sort of shocked to see the long, sinuous wrack lines of countless dead animals.
Apparently May and June are peak times for Velella strandings, especially when El Niño conditions are brewing. When they're in their element, floating in the open oceans of tropical and subtropical waters, Velella eat plankton and are in turn eaten by sea snails and sea slugs (and occasionally by gulls).
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| Looks like the wasp nest was attacked again. Despite the repeated attacks, the wasps diligently keep on truckin'. |
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| Bison Enjoying the Sun |
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| I was surprised to see a raven feeding on a dead gopher on the west side of North Lake. I wondered how the raven managed to take possession of it. Did a hawk drop it while being mobbed by crows and/or ravens? Did it simply die in the open? Or could a raven could actually catch and kill a gopher on its own? |
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| Wrack Lines of By-the-Wind Sailors |
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| Another odd bit of feeding behavior that I saw recently was in the neighbor's oak tree -- a squirrel stripping and eating tree bark. |
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