Watching Clouds

 

A little sunshine breaks through to highlight the still-green flanks of Mt. Tamalpais.

I thought I might get caught in the rain during my ride down to the beach today, and indeed I did. Getting home cold and wet, I scratched the planned salad for lunch and swapped it out for a hot bowl of franks 'n beans. While I was gone I had my DSLR run a time lapse of the clouds flowing and boiling out toward Sutro Tower and Twin Peaks. Unfortunately it ran out its 40-minute timer before the rain started, but you can tell it's coming.

I brought the FZ80 along for the ride and couldn't resist photographing the clouds over the ocean, the dunes, and Mt. Tamalpais. I might have to head out to Pt. Reyes tomorrow to look for some cloudscapes with wildflowers.

Over the weekend my wife and I brought a picnic up to Mt. Tam, and I was reminded how crowded it gets up there on a Saturday, with so many cars and bikes sharing the steep, winding, and narrow roads. I almost took out a bicyclist whose approach was perfectly blocked by the wide A-pillar on my car (the single worst feature of the Mazda 3). I felt awful that even driving carefully almost resulted in a collision with a bicyclist, and it reminded me to be extra-careful driving on Mt. Tam, and also to never let my guard down when I'm riding.

From our picnic spot I was surprised to see a pair of rangers hiking along the trail below. I don't recall ever seeing rangers hiking on Mt. Tam before. About an hour after they passed by, a couple of people pedaled by on bicycles, on the same trail, which is most definitely not a legal bike route. 

Storm at Sea

Dunes & Clouds at Ocean Beach

Several weeks ago I saw two red-tailed hawks standing close together up where that red circle is, but one of them flew away by the time I got my camera out of the bike's trunk bag. I've been waiting to see it again ever since, and today was close enough. They were both up there, although on opposite sides of the blade. This is the Murphy Windmill south of the more popular Dutch Windmill at the Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden.

Close-up of the hawks circled in red above.

State Park Rangers carrying side arms and wearing bullet-proof vests hike along the flower-studded Coastal Trail.

This is a pretty busy trail, especially at mid-day on a gorgeous weekend, but somehow a pair of scofflaws on bikes managed to get through.

Cloudscape Time Lapse

(5/2/23)

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Where the Animals Are

 

Two-Frame Composite of Passing Bobcat

An increase in captures has made me cautiously optimistic about developments along the camera traps, with hopes of catching interesting behavior and eventually kittens, pups, cubs, leverets, chicks, and fawns. Fingers crossed.

Gray Fox at Midnight

This is a healthy coyote, but the limping coyote I first saw on 4/13 was also caught on the traps and appears in the video below.

Another two-frame bobcat composite.

Velvet-Antlered Buck in Lovely Light

Bobcat at Dusk

Video Clips on YouTube

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Cats & Dogs

 

Bush Lupines & Mt. Tamalpais

In the last couple of weeks the camera traps have picked up more fox, coyote, and bobcat than they did in the previous couple of months. If I was a little disappointed to have so little action for so long, I'm now a little embarrassed by the riches. I used to be sure to keyword "bobcat" in my trail cam images so I could easily find the needles in the haystack, but I quit doing that half-way through this last batch. It felt almost as silly as keywording "deer" which, next to empty frames, account for most of the triggers. (Besides wind-blown grass and tree branches, a fox, bird, or insect flitting across the scene can trigger the sensors, but by the time the camera starts recording there's nothing there anymore.)

As I was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on my way to the mountain I noticed a work truck and couple of guys doing repairs on the southbound lane right next to the barrier, and my first thought was that it seemed like a supremely unsafe place to be. Since the barriers have gone in, people routinely drive 60 mph in that lane. These guys hadn't even set up orange safety cones. Then about a second later I realized there were no other cars in the southbound lanes. By the time I reached the other end of the bridge, the backed-up traffic was just being released.

Speaking of traffic, I need to figure out how to make a safety recommendation for CA-1, the Shoreline Highway. A lot of tourists from out of state use that route, and they are usually the ones who give me a close shave when they pass. They obviously don't know the law about leaving three feet of distance when passing a cyclist, and street signs about the law might help get the word out.

As I got close to Bootjack I spotted a bush full of the tubular white flowers of pitcher sage growing next to a blue California lilac also in full bloom. Meanwhile, I was surprised to see that the calypso orchids at the top end of the Bootjack parking lot were still going strong. The sky lupines have finally come out in large numbers, but for the most part are obscured by grasses that were tall enough in places to see wind-waves rippling through. 

As I rode out West Ridgecrest Road to check out the same vista point I reached on my last trip, I got a flat tire. Oh good, now I get to see if my new pump really works. I'd also bought some new pre-glued tube patches to try out. Oddly, the tube was punctured on the rim-facing surface. Nothing had punctured the tire to reach the tube. I noticed that the rim tape had gotten all bunched up and pushed aside in that area, and couldn't be straightened out. Bummer, since who carries spare rim tape? I patched the tube and pumped up the tire, only to curse the new pump until I realized the problem was the pre-glued patch. Air was leaking out as fast as I could pump it in. Next I just installed a new tube, and after about 200 pump-strokes had the tire inflated enough for the ride home, with my fingers crossed the whole way that the rim tape issue wouldn't give me another flat.

Two Lanes, No Bridge

I'm wondering how long this overhang of the forest floor along Panoramic Highway is going to hold before a whole bunch of these small redwoods topples into the road.

Wildflowers on Bolinas Ridge

You can just make out the purple lupines on this hillside, but the grass is a little too tall for them to really stand out.

Flat Repair Shop With A View

Bobcat Seeks Gopher Opportunity

King of the Hill Coyote

Travels of The Night Fox

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Stinky's Back

 

Latticed Stinkhorn

A small fragment of orange peeked out from the wood chips and caught my attention as I walked along the Sunset Parkway yesterday. A little further investigation turned up several more-developed baskets of Latticed Stinkhorn, which I first spotted last August. Maybe fog-drip gives the mycelium just the right amount of moisture to fruit. I was surprised that our very wet winter didn't produce the bumper crop of mushrooms I expected on Mt. Tam. I guess even fungi can have too much of a good thing.

As I looked again at my wildflower photos from Table Mountain and Carrizo Plain I was struck by how commonplace it seemed to find hills and fields covered with flowers, as if it didn't take driving several hours in an automobile to find them. I'm biking up to Mt. Tam later this morning, where I'm sure the bloom will be much less prolific. It won't be a disappointment, though. It'll be a reminder and reminiscence of the appreciation I felt for the awesome spectacle I experienced farther afield.

Back here on the home front -- on my compost bin, that is -- I was surprised to find a garden snail stomach-footing across the lid. It must have hitched a ride in the lovely but invasive Oxalis pes-caprae that I'd pulled from the south-facing slope of nearby Grandview Park (the west and north sides are hopelessly infested), but the trash and compost had already been picked up that morning. Somehow during all the hubbub the snail made it to the outside of the can. (FWIW, my neighbor, who's retired from managing the California Garden at Strybing Arboretum, had invited me to help with the weeding at Grandview, under the auspices of the Parks Department. I don't go around pulling weeds wherever I feel like it!)

Another bit of nature I've seen on my walk recently. There's a house on 16th Avenue that's chock-full of flowering plants that seems like a bee and hummingbird playground. But what I also noticed as I passed by the other day was a fluttering dark butterfly. I watched its acrobatics until it landed -- on a huge patch of pipevine that I'd never noticed before.

Helix aspersa (now Cornu aspersum), dispersing. 

Pipevine Swallowtail In Residence

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Return to Carrizo Plain

Purple Parry's Mallow & Friends
(click to view larger)

The wildflowers of Carrizo Plain National Monument (so designated in 2001) have been calling out to me ever since I drove through with my wife about three weeks ago on our way to San Diego. The bloom has certainly matured since then. Some early species have set seed and faded where they once flourished, while others such as larkspur, owl's clover, and a big purple salvia have begun to bloom. Hardy, spiky-stemmed fiddleneck remains the undisputed king of the plain, and even though much of the color has receded in the mountains, the display remains impressive, especially compared with drier springtimes I've seen in the past.

I pulled into the Soda Lake Overlook parking lot while it was still dark, having made the drive during the wee hours. I figured I could spend the time until dawn by photographing the Milky Way with wildflowers in the foreground, but it was densely foggy when I arrived, so I took a nap instead. Truth be told, I was grateful to the fog for giving me an excuse not to go poking around in the dark to find a suitable foreground for the night shot. It almost certainly would have been a futile exercise anyway since I had pictured using the beautiful patch of wildflowers I saw at the overlook on April 4. As I discovered when it was light out, that whole patch was gone.

I drove down from the overlook to Soda Lake, where I parked at the edge of the small lot so I'd easily be able to get out if it got crowded and jim-jammed the way it looked when we were there three weeks ago. I made the short walk to the edge of the lake, then out and back along the slippery, wet boardwalk, and when I eventually circled back to the car I was surprised to see that it was still the only one there. I hardly saw another soul until after 10 a.m., and the pace didn't really pick up to the early-April levels until after 11 a.m.

The area around Soda Lake made for some enjoyable exploration. The peace and quiet was marred by my own appearance at the edge of the lake when one of the two American avocets in the vicinity called out in alarm. It was so vociferous I wondered if it was nesting nearby, so I kept my visit short out of respect. Just across Soda Lake Road was an intriguing patch of pinkish flowers, so I strolled over for a closer look and found they were owl's clover. A small group of elk was resting in the far distance between me and the Caliente Range. I assume there are still pronghorn out there, but I didn't see any.

Although the wildflower bloom had noticeably filled out toward the north end of the monument since I last saw it, the south end still had lots to offer. I also checked out Elkhorn Grade Road, whose existence I only noticed for the first time three weeks ago. I'd never before seen wildflowers on those seemingly inhospitable south-facing mountainsides of the Temblor Range. 

From there I'd like to have driven toward the coast to check out Big Sur, but Caltrans still has CA-1 closed due to rockslides. Instead I drove back up Soda Lake Road and parked to eat lunch and rest under the shade of one of the very few trees out there, in a small planted eucalyptus grove at the KCL Campground. The brightly colored bullock's orioles that captured my attention on a previous visit were nowhere to be seen, and only a starling (which I considered a poor and potentially ominous substitute) called out from the trees.

By the time I passed Soda Lake on my way home that afternoon, the parking area was just as overflowing with vehicles as I'd remembered from three weeks ago. If Carrizo was that popular all year, the Park Service would have to pave the roads and build some sort of tourist complex. But it's probably only like that for a couple of months, and in a dry year not even that. Even my neighbor, who'd never heard of Carrizo Plain, knew the word that gets everyone out there: "superbloom." Here's hoping El Nino brings us another one next year.

This might be Delphinium gypsophilum, one of five larkspur species found at Carrizo.

I'm pretty sure this is Delphinium recurvatum, the most prevalent larkspur I saw.

I never thought I would see Soda Lake so full of water, or so foggy!

The elegant, lilac-colored flowers of recurved larkspur.

Grass Riot No. 1
(at Soda Lake parking area; note trail in upper left of frame)

Grass Riot No. 2
(with Soda Lake and Temblor Range)

Larkspur & Friends Lakeside on the Plain

View from Soda Lake toward Caliente Range, with wading American Avocets

Shoreline Curves in Gold

Fiddleneck, King of the Plain

Meadow Dressed in Layers

Owl's Clover Meadow Near Soda Lake

White-colored owl's clover mixing with the pink.

This is as far along Simmler Road as I dared to go in my Mazda 3, due to very deep ruts made when the soil was wet and soft.

View along Soda Lake Road toward Caliente Range

Impressionistic Landscape

Flowers in the Sun
(This was possibly the last relatively cool day, with a high of 75, before a heat wave would move in.)

The first time I ducked out of their way I didn't know what had narrowly missed me. It was at least two of these beetles (Paracotalpa ursina) buzzing through the air, clinched together in what I guess was a mating flight.

Purple thistle sage (Salvia carduacea) frolic in soil too unsuitable for the looming king of the plains.

Thistle Sage

Temblor Range from Soda Lake Road

Still lots of color up there
(view from Soda Lake Road).

These are the hills I saw three weeks ago from CA-166, and this view is from Elkhorn Grade Road, where I was surprised to have a big brown UPS truck pull in behind me until I saw that there's a Nestle/Purina clay-mining facility just off the dirt road. Check out what a trucker says about making deliveries here. (Do you see the SUV trailing dust near the upper left ridge?)

Click to see the large version of these two panoramas, at 1800 pixels wide. This one is from a vista point near the southern end of Elkhorn Road.

Veins of California Gold

Driving to Carrizo in the dark, I had no idea what I was missing.

This stunning and undisturbed meadow is on private property just across the highway from the popular wildflower meadows of Shell Creek Road.

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