June Boom

 

California Quail

The annual grasses are turning brown, but Mt. Tamalpais is booming with life. California quail are calling to each other and keeping watch, wild turkeys are nesting, bucks are sporting ever-larger (and still growing) antlers, new wildflowers are blooming, and dragonflies and fence lizards are soaking up the sun. In the woods, fog-drip has been keeping the forest floor moist enough for banana slugs, as well as everyone's favorite woodland plant, poison oak.

The fecundity of the woods kind of blew me away when I was relocating my trail cams and approached a pool I've set up on before. The thick undergrowth showed no sign of the usual animal trails in the vicinity, and I had to gingerly make my way to the pool through abundant poison oak. When I got to the pool I was disappointed to see that winter storms had filled it with gravel. With the pool gone, and the approach so full of poison oak, I decided to set up the cams elsewhere. 

When I returned to my bike near the Rock Spring parking lot I watched a tom turkey strutting his stuff in the shade of the beautiful oak near the trail-information board. While I was watching I heard a scuffling of leaves in the nearby woods and discovered a hen turkey scooping out a depression and lying down in it. It didn't look like dirt-bath behavior, so I look forward to checking up on her again to see if she was making a nest.

Guano meets the high tide line on this rock off Baker Beach at low tide. You can just make out the bright red color of an ochre sea star near the rock's base.

Thursday started out sunny in San Francisco, but clouds soon moved in from the north. 

The container ship Wan Hai 361, loaded with goods from Taiwan and China, enters San Francisco Bay.

I was surprised to see the broomrape had actually gotten smaller instead of bigger. This is the same cluster I photographed last week. The non-photosynthetic plant is probably getting its nourishment from the green yerba santa growing next to it.

This wild rose with hover fly was right next to some other broomrapes.

White Brodiaea flowering near a seep spring.

Stonecrop on a sunny, south-facing cliff.

Buck near the trail camera location.

This is an overview of the trail cam location, which has been pretty good despite all the annoying wind-activations.

Sow bugs and fungi break down fox poop deposited on a mossy boulder where one of the cams has been set up for a few months.

Eggleaf spurge, also near the trail cam location.

The first yellow mariposa lily of the season? I didn't see any others.

Sluggo in the Moss

The old trail cam site at a pool that has filled with gravel.

Mosaic Darner

Fence Lizard

Poison Oak

Tom Turkey at Rock Spring

Hen Turkey Deciding Whether I'm a Threat or Not
(then settling back down to her nest)

A quail keeps watch from a small oak next to the Rock Spring picnic area.

An Acorn Woodpecker rests near the picnic area.

 A Jackrabbit passes the scent rock with moss dried out.

Buck Deer in Morning Light

Coyote Strikes a Pose

Bobcat

Same bobcat, three seconds later.

Buck feeding next to the mossy rock, once again green with moisture, that's used as a scent post by foxes and coyotes.

Tam Cam Video Clips

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Salt Point State Park

 

Edge of the Marine Terrace at Salt Point
(click to view larger)

It's been a tough spring to find even one relatively fog-free day to photograph wildflower landscapes along the coast. I've been eagerly watching the weather forecast (including wind and webcams), and yesterday seemed to offer the best, and possibly the last, opportunity I could expect to have at Salt Point State Park before the best of the bloom goes to seed. 

To get to Salt Point I usually take the 101 north to 116 west, then head up the coast highway at Jenner, but this time I let Google Maps guide me on a different route, even though it only promised to shave 10 minutes and 1.3 miles from my usual route. I got off the 101 at Railroad Ave.,  then took Roblar and Valley Ford to Bodega Bay. As I drove through the darkness and the patchy fog, I was glad my phone didn't lose contact with the "directions lady" since I had no idea where I was. A bright spot, both figuratively and literally, was having the full moon often in view, either right in front of me or out the side window, as it slowly sank toward the sea. 

There were three road construction areas between Jenner and the park (which Google Maps surprisingly didn't show), each of which involved several minutes of waiting for a green light to drive the single-lane stretch. Each stop had a sign warning of a possible 10-minute delay. The waits caused me to arrive a little later than I'd planned, but it was all good. I arrived at the Stump Beach parking lot after sunrise but well before the sun rose high enough to crest the forest east of the coastal plain.  

A hazy fog still hugged the shoreline, but the sun managed to push it away from the immediate coast until around 10 a.m. There was virtually no wind, the temperature was mild enough for shorts, the flowers were dewy, and there was a pretty decent swell adding drama to the ocean. It seemed like the wildflower peak might have been a couple of weeks ago, especially for the Sea Pink, but it was still an admirable landscape.

In addition to the wildflowers decorating the marine terrace, Salt Point is also a great place to explore compositions among the intriguing tafoni sandstone formations, and just north of Stump Beach is the Kruse Rhododendron State Natural Reserve. The rhodies were still in bloom, but with the fog having just burned off (gorgeous forest sunbeams faded before I could get out my camera gear) I was drawn more to the candy-striped orchids and bright orange lilies on the forest floor. 

If I'd stayed at Kruse a little longer, I might have had another chance with the fog beams. As I headed south for home I checked out Gerstle Cove, where I asked the ranger if I could go in briefly without having to pay the $8 day use fee. I thought she would either say no or wave me through, but she actually printed out a free Courtesy Pass that I taped to my windshield. Unfortunately, the coast had become so socked in by fog that I didn't even get out of the car. 

Stump Beach in Black-and-White

Johnny-nip in Yellow (Castilleja ambigua)

Scarlet Paintbrush

Wildflower Garden Along Stump Beach Cove

Seaside Daisy, Lupine, and Sea Pink

Morning Sun Lights up the Lupines (Lupinus variicolor)

Sea Pink pokes its head above the bed of lupines.

View from Above

Land's End

Prickly Coast

Sea Pink (Armeria maritima ssp. californica) & Sandstone

June Coast

Tafoni #1

Tafoni #2

Tafoni #3

A Flow of Sandstone

Tafoni #4

An Exuberance of Life on the Marine Terrace

Scarlet Paintbrush in the Sun

Sun in the Mist

Coast Lily
(Lilium maritimum)

Pacific Coralroot #1
(Corallorhiza mertensiana)

Pacific Coralroot #2

Pacific Coralroot #3

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Scent Post

 

Coyote at Scent Post, May 22, 2023

The grass has gotten so tall around the GardePro trail cam that a bobcat could almost walk by without triggering an exposure. I say "almost," but I haven't actually seen a bobcat on either of the cams in a few weeks. Are they sneaking by in the tall grass, or have they simply found better hunting grounds? 

There's still a tiny bit of water running in the little creek, but it no longer seems to be a source of drinking water, even for birds. The GardePro had hundreds of empty-frame wind-activations, several buck deer still growing their antlers, a couple of coyotes, one fox, and one turkey. Not much of a haul for a two-week stint.

The other cam is the Foxelli which has been strapped to a bay laurel and points at a mossy boulder that the local foxes and coyotes use for a scent post. 

I've given up hope on catching a mama bobcat leading her young kittens through either of these traps, or of seeing anything new and interesting, so I'm planning to move the cams to another site the next time I'm up there.

Coyote Checking for Messages, May 24, 2023

Coyote Leaving a Message

Buck on a Foggy Morning

A Fox Checks for Messages, May 30, 2023

Fox Leaves a Message

Sixteenth Avenue Steps

I forgot to post this while it was still May. No big deal, but I recently came across the 2013 photo of these tiled steps that climb from Kirkham to Lawton streets at 16th Avenue, and I felt like like doing a ten-year comparison. The decorative tiles themselves seem little changed. You can't see it here, but there is a chip in one of the tiles that was caused by a tree falling on the steps over the winter. The main changes have occurred along the edges outside the steps. I'm guessing the quality of light, as well as the different cameras (a Nikon P7100 vs. Panasonic FZ80), account for the step-on tiles being blue-gray on the left and a more true-to-life white on the right.

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