Urban Quail

 

Quail on Look-Out Duty, Strybing Arboretum

The California Quail, our State Bird since 1931, was named San Francisco's "official bird" twenty-one years ago this month. The last time I photographed one of the handsome males in Strybing Arboretum was in 2008. It was always such a joy to hear and see quail in the arboretum, whether bustling across the trail with a line of newborn chicks in tow, or hopping up onto a park bench to provide early warning of danger from hawks and, probably more importantly, domestic cats. 

Two years ago, SFGate reported that the quail had last been seen in Golden Gate Park in 2017 and was, by 2020, locally extinct. If cats (along with hawks, rats, skunks, and raccoons) truly were the bane of quail, then coyotes might give a boost to efforts to re-introduce quail in the Presidio. As a report on quail research from the Presidio Trust said, "Looking at urban parks across the state, researchers found that parks with coyotes had a 73% higher likelihood of being occupied by quail than similar parks without coyotes."

As far as I can tell, no quail have been reintroduced yet. Maybe now that the big Tunnel Tops project has finally been completed, attention can be turned toward doing so. I hope that someday soon I will once again be able to see and hear California quail in the city, and maybe even, once again, in Golden Gate Park.

What got me thinking about all this was a chance photo picked up yesterday by the trail camera I keep in the back yard:

Yard Quail

The cam was triggered while I was setting it up and happened to be pointing at a metal quail sculpture  (bought at Micano in Reno) that's mounted in the yard.

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Wonder Pools

Little Moonglow
(Click photos to view larger.)

Although I did see footprints in the sand when I got down to the beach, I appeared to be the first tidepooler of the morning at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve on Sunday (not counting the great blue heron and flock of sea gulls). After descending the stairs at Seal Cove (the main entrance was still closed) I headed up the beach and soon spotted movement in one of the pools, some kind of crab. 

I wrestled my Nikon out of a canvas Domke shoulder bag, trying not to dump the Panasonic FZ-80 in the process. So much for the Domke, which turns out not to be a very good bag for this kind of work. Along with the FZ-80 for grab shots, I had brought my D800E with a 105/Micro and a small SB-400 flash attached to an SC-29 coiled remote cord. I turned it all on and was promptly greeted by a "card error" flashing in the display. 

In the minute or so that it took to sort that out and get the D800 working, the crab had gone to ground, hiding probably in plain sight, but so well-camouflaged that I needed my special x-ray vision to find it again. Even when I was right above it, I found it virtually impossible to make a photograph of the crab, a kelp crab, that would look like anything other than random colors and shapes. Even when it moved out of its hidey-hole of seaweed its camo held up quite well.

I moved on from the kelp crab to a lovely little orange moonglow anemone about the size of a half-dollar, then to another one nearby. By the time I reached the second one, a hermit crab had photobombed it. The crab was in no rush to vacate the premises, so I gently flicked it out of the way. When I finally looked up  from my tidepooling I was surprised to see that several people had joined me on the reef. By the time I left, there were probably three-dozen or so people out there. It was nice to have low tide striking at such a reasonable hour, and on a weekend to boot.

The sun made a very brief appearance, dazzling us with brighter colors and a more cheerful atmosphere, but Karl the Fog soon reasserted himself over his briny domain.

As I skimmed across the reef peering into pools I stopped several times to just take in the beauty of them, the wonder of the everyday aliens that share this incredible planet with us. I asked a couple of docents if they'd seen any nudibranchs, and they pointed me back down the reef toward a guy in a distinctively bright orange jacket. 

I asked around when I reached him, but no one had a bead on any 'branchs at the moment. As I mosied back toward the beach I spotted a different bright orange creature that I took to be a worm or some kind of new 'branch, but a boy about 10 or 11 years old took one look at the tiny inch-long thing from maybe 10-15 feet away and said it was probably a sea cucumber. Oh, to have laser eyes like that again. I never would have guessed that sea cukes could be so small, and I looked it up when I got home. The kid was absolutely correct.

Hermit Crab Photobombing Moonglow Anemone

Seal Cove

GBH Looking for Morsels

Camouflaged Crab

Crusted Kelp Crab Out in the Open

Inflorescence of Coralline Algae

Best Buds (Sea Star and Anemone)

Coralline Algae with Folded-up Anemones

Big Daddy on a Stalk

Barnacle Bill (and Ted and Hillary)

Sea Shell Collector

Enjoying Our Thirty Seconds of Sunshine

Li'l Cuke

Orange Sea Cucumber (Cucumaria miniata)

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Bumps on a Log

 

California Quail

The Mt. Tam Cam has been doing log duty the last few weeks, but now that the creeks are drying up I've moved the cam to a pool where I hope to catch various animals coming down for a drink. One of the animals that showed up a lot last year was a screech owl, and the owl made a recent appearance here on the log. I have yet to catch a daytime photo of it.

Although the cam was hidden pretty well in a hollow of this tree, I hadn't counted on one of the resident foxes managing to knock it askew. It was a good thing I'd secured the camera to a rock, or it might have tumbled to the ground. You can see in the frame below where the owl shows up that the cam has been jostled to the right.

In addition to seeing the various animals that stop by, it's kind of interesting to see the difference in the quality of light on the mossy log and surrounding forest.

A long time ago, probably in the '90s, I found a strange animal on a log that spanned Redwood Creek. It was just lying there half-way across the log, dead. I took it to Muir Woods to see if a ranger could tell me what it was, and it turned out to be a weasel. I'd never seen one before and had no idea they were so small. I think of that encounter whenever I set up the trail cam on this log, but no weasel has ever been caught on it, which leads me to suspect that they prefer being farther down the mountain.

Western Fence Lizard

Gray Fox

Gray Squirrel

Sonoma Chipmunk & Possible Newt

Hermit Thrush

Screech Owl

Fox Play

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