Around the Horn

 

Bison on the Move

The bison were all grazing out in the field, so I stopped my bike, only to have them all suddenly start moving toward the feeding pens. Apparently their regular feed is preferable to the available field greens.

The Dutch Windmill with tulips in the Queen Wilhelmina Garden.

The Coast Guard was taking advantage of the hazardous weather conditions today by practicing ocean rescues. The chopper, an Airbus MH-65D Dolphin, had to maintain its position in the wind while lowering a rescue swimmer to the water (the orange thing is the "victim" that was summarily tossed out of the chopper into the sea).

The wind was blowing around 22 mph with 30 mph gusts.

Looks calm here.... 

Every time the kingfisher sounded off with its chittering call, it raised its head and tail feathers.

An allen's hummingbird landed on a nearby branch while I was watching the kingfisher.

Then it flew to an even closer lichen-covered branch to do some preening.

Flashing the warm-toned gorget.

And more preening.

The Metson Lake GBH was in attendance and took occasional interest in passing minnows, without actually taking a stab at anything in the few minutes I spent watching.

But mostly it appeared to just be hanging out in the sunshine.

* * *

Unruffled

 

Coast Guard Motor Lifeboat at Ocean Beach

According to NOAA's National Data Buoy Center, the swells are running 12-14 feet today. I noticed the waves were breaking farther out than usual when I did my walk this morning, and I was glad I'd brought my camera when I later biked down to the beach. I figured there wouldn't be any surfers out in that huge chaos, but the Coast Guard evidentally saw the hazardous conditions as a perfect training opportunity.

Nice day for a splash in the ocean.

Testing to see if these boats are, in fact, unsinkable.

Unruffled

Ruffled

Unruffled

I noticed the other day that the dynamic duo of red-tailed hawks who like to hang out atop the Murphy Windmill are perching closer together than usual. Are they a mating pair, or siblings?

* * *

Spontaneity vs. Planning

 

A Half-Dozen Deer, Mt. Tamalpais

I was hoping to do some tidepooling on Thursday after checking up on my trail cams. I'd checked the tide tables and saw that Duxbury Reef would have a good minus tide around 3 p.m. What I forgot to check was the wind forecast. If I had checked, I'd have waited until today to go.

Even on Thursday, there was almost no wind on Bolinas Ridge, where the day was spectacularly beautiful. The ocean in front of Stinson Beach also looked fairly calm, but there were whitecaps on the ocean in front of Bolinas, on the side where the reef is. I thought about just heading home, but since I had all day I drove on down the mountain, on the tiny chance that tidepooling might still be possible.

The wind blew my hat off as I walked down the trail to the beach. You could still look at tidepools, and maybe even see something through the turbulent and murky water, but there was no point trying to do any photography. 

No big deal. A spontaneous trip to Duxbury Reef that doesn't work out, I can live with. Plus it was a nice day for a drive.

Last week I'd been planning to head down to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park to hopefully catch some early desert wildflower action, but as my departure date neared, the forecast turned to "blowing dust" and gusty winds. I wasn't going to drive more than a thousand miles round trip to get skunked by the wind, so I didn't go. This coming week looks promising though, so I'm looking forward to getting back down there for the first time since 2010. I can hardly believe it's been so long!

I had my DSLR gear, but the only pictures I took were with the FZ80 during my hike to the trail cams.

I managed to get off one frame of this varied thrush with a bay nut in its beak before it flew away. 

The bear's head fungus was still alive!

Muddy water and howling wind at Duxbury Reef.

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Grab Bag

 

Mellow Swell at Ocean Beach

The ocean looked strange today. A combination of high tide and almost no wind left a fairly glassy surface, and each small swell looked like a kind of liquid jewel swirling toward the beach. 

Going Long

Short Take

Tuesday's Gone
(rear window sunrise, 3/5/24)

Miner's Dew

After Georgia O'Keeffe

* * *

Male Rain

 

Yosemite High Country Cam
(2/29 & 3/3)

Yosemite Valley Cam
(2/29 & 3/3)

It doesn't look like Yosemite got as much snow as they expected. I've seen the High Country cam's view completely obliterated before, and Yosemite Valley appears to have gotten little more than a respectable dusting.

I first read about male rain and female rain back in the early '90s in books by Doug Boyd, especially Rolling Thunder and Mad Bear, and then later in reading Tony Hillerman's Navajo mystery novels featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. 

As I looked out the windows at the rain pouring down in the last day or two, I couldn't help thinking it looked like a male rain for a change. We've been getting lots of little showers this rainy season, but nothing like the deluge we just experienced. Of course, I don't consider it a real deluge until it blows out the manhole cover just up the street, which we've only seen two or three times in the 20+ years we've lived here. 

Rainy Day Timelapse

* * *

Blowin' in the Wind

 

Howlin'

Not to rub it in or anything, but this morning I once again found myself feeling deeply grateful to be able to go for walks and bike rides instead of going to work. My walk took me over Parnassus Heights to Cole Valley, up and down the Haight, into the gardens and woodlands of Golden Gate Park, then back home through the Inner Sunset. Then it was back through the park for the bike ride, with a side trip to the old Cliff House to savor the awesome meeting of wind and wave. 

I was looking for a title for this post and came up with something probably too obvious. However, I looked up the lyrics and was struck by the fact that Dylan's song, written in 1962, could have been written for today. Some things never change. Ars longa, vita brevis.

Toil and Trouble

Sudsy Scoter

The perspective from the back deck of the old Cliff House always puts the high point of Seal Rocks even with the horizon. I think I'd like to be higher up, to put the horizon above the peak. Someday the old Cliff House will open up again and I'll be able to do that, maybe while enjoying a burger and a beer.

OBSF

Friday Crowd

Willets outnumbered people today.

It was good to see them back again.

Screenshot from this morning's sunrise timelapse.

Sunrise Timelapse, 3/1/24

* * *

Tree Houseleek

Dressed in rain gear and pressing down on my ballcap to keep it from blowing away on this blustery Leap Day, I almost walked right past these blooming yellow plants without noticing something different about them.... Besides the September shot above, they're also in a picture from early December, and they weren't blooming then, either.

Apparently these natives of the Canary Islands are in the genus Aeonium (Greek for "ageless"), and these are probably A. arboreum or A. canariense. On Wikipedia they are given the oh-so-common name of tree houseleeks: the Anglo-Saxon word leac means plant, so they are basically called Tree Houseplants.  They're in the Crassulaceae, same as our stonecrops.

* * *

Spring Bling

 

Shooting Stars

Spring is still almost three weeks away, and I guess we're going to get some heavy winter snows in the Sierra this weekend, but a few of my favorite early-season Mt. Tam wildflowers make it seem like spring is already here. I felt a little guilty to actually drive all the way up there just to snap a few photos with the DSLR, but it won't happen again (at least, not until next time). 

I also swapped out the two trail camera memory cards and gathered a few more male hazel flowers in the hope of dusting some of their pollen on the female flowers of our backyard hazel. After I clipped a few of the open catkins I shook the branches and sent a beautiful golden cloud of pollen drifting on a very light breeze. If only I could get a cloud like that to drift past my homegrown plant. 

When I hiked the short distance out to one of my favorite spots for finding calypso orchids, shooting stars, and Indian warrior (or warrior's plume, Pedicularis densiflora), I found a very changed landscape. There's been so much forest thinning going on (as a precaution against fire) that I found mostly fallen trees and slash piles along the forest edges where I'd expected to find wildflowers. Thankfully I still managed to find the few special species I was looking for. 

I'm curious to see what's going to happen with all the girdled trees. Will they die and become the well-used pantries of acorn woodpeckers? Homes to beetle larvae for pileated woodpeckers to dig out? A source of nesting holes for red-breasted nuthatches? I hope so.

Petals, Wavy & Flat

Like Indian paintbrush, Indian warrior is a hemiparasite, meaning it likes to parasitize the roots of other plants, but can live without doing so.

Calscape says it likes to parasitize members of the heath family, such as madrone.

Like a jubilant opera star, the fairy slipper (Calypso bulbosa) appears to sing its heart out.

Tiny sprouts of turkey pea (Sanicula tuberosa) were coming up among serpentine gravels.

Small Falls

The water flows have gone down quite a bit, and the forest floor has been drying out and getting crunchy again. Just in time for another deluge of rain. Bring it!

Pacific Trillium

Bobcat Composite

The bobcat must have been brushing up against the trail camera when it first set it off. A fox and a coyote also made an appearance this week, in addition to numerous turkeys and deer.

* * *

Metson Lake Heron

 

Great Blue Heron at Attention

The great blue heron was in its usual spot within a scramble of branches when I biked past Metson Lake yesterday, so I took a little break to watch from a park bench on the edge of the lake. I first noticed the fallen tree on 2/3/23, and only recently began to see the occasional heron in there. It appeared to be resting and preening for the most part, although it did briefly show interest in something that swam by near its feet. I also saw a heron back (after a long absence in the wake of the Feb. 4 wind storm) in one of the nesting trees at Blue Heron Lake on the way home.

Preening the Wing

Stretching a Leg

I heard the clip-clopping of horses behind me as I was about to pack up and leave.

* * *