Changing Seasons

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I was surprised to arrive at the gate so early -- a good fifteen minutes before 7 a.m. -- to find a bunch of cars parked and waiting for the gate to be opened. There were eight cars parked in front of the gate before the ranger arrived and made it nine, plus me and two cars behind me across the street. Turns out we weren't all eager hikers or crazed photographers, but mostly folks there to get things ready for opening day of the Mountain Play.

I joined the convoy up the mountain and pulled out at Sunset Point. The light was gorgeous. I wish I had space on my walls to print and mount this 30x60-inch panorama. It's been a few weeks since I was up there, and it was interesting to see so much golden grass with just a hint of green left in it. Also, driving over the Golden Gate Bridge I'd noticed quite a few small fishing boats motoring out the bay toward the gate, and from this vantage point I could see many more at sea off Stinson Beach. Zooming into the details in this picture I counted 56 vessels, some at anchor and others leaving a wake.

There was lots of activity at Rock Spring as crews got ready to direct the crowds that would be arriving later for the play, but the trail was quiet as I hiked down toward Laurel Dell -- quiet enough to find a still-sleeping flower longhorn beetle on these mule ears. Quiet enough to enjoy the trilling of Pacific wrens and the skittering of Wilson's warblers foraging among the sword ferns.

Quiet enough to do some thinking about my next photography project, too, something I've been thinking about almost since I moved to California to go to photography school back in the early '80s. Unfortunately, I'm still seven or eight years away from being able to carry out my project because it will require much more time than I can devote to it right now.

Until then, I'll need to stay in shape both physically and photographically, and trust that I'll still want to do it when the time comes!

Which came first: the spring robin or the sprung robin?

Jewels in the serpentine.

Rock Spring at about 9 a.m.

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Camera Trapping Project

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Just read in the Marin IJ about this big camera trapping project. It's funny because I've spotted a couple of camera traps on Mt. Tam and often found myself looking for them as I've hiked around the mountain. The Marin Wildlife Picture Index Project has been collecting images on more than 100 camera traps since late 2014, in several Marin County parks. Volunteers are needed to catalog images (done during the workday, alas; see May 19, 24, June 2, 16) and maintain the traps (swap out batteries and memory cards).

I was interested to read that they lay out the camera traps without an eye for likely areas such as animal trails, den areas, streams or water holes: "The WPI utilizes motion-activated wildlife cameras that are positioned along a grid at regular intervals across a large area. The grid provides non-biased sampling locations...." Nevertheless, some cameras are positioned along trails, as the image of the mountain lion shows. I'm not sure why a grid bias is preferable to a habitat bias, but it is kind of surprising to see images from fairly random-looking vantage points -- a benefit of operating dozens of cameras over a long period of time.

I'd started my own project about a year before this one got under way, but my efforts were about satisfying my own curiosity about what animals might turn up in various locations that I had a definite bias for. The data are in bits and pieces and show no complete picture of anything, but they were always fun to collect.

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Ring Mountain

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When I woke up and saw more than just a wall of fog out my window I decided to take a crack at catching a sunrise up on Ring Mountain. This is the blueschist boulder with the petroglyphs on it (and a few nasty scratches made by obligatory idiots). San Francisco is in the distance to the right.

Unfortunately, the sunrise never really went off, color-wise. This is the view through a 300mm lens.

I hiked up in the dark, using a headlight to see the rocky trail and holding a small flashlight for the darker stretches where the trail was covered by trees. Coyotes yipped across the hillside to the east. The petroglyphs that give Ring Mountain its name were hard to see in the dim, diffuse light. 

I gave up on catching good light at the petroglyph site and started to poke around to look for the Tiburon mariposa lilies. I've only been up there a few times and I couldn't remember exactly where they were, so I hiked higher and farther west than I needed to, but I didn't care because I also wanted to see Mt. Tam. The clouds were thick around the mountain, and when I drove over there later on I needed to run the windshield wipers a few times.

This was about as colorful as the sunrise got. A bit of a gale was blowing on the ridge.

I don't often see Indian pink since it doesn't grow on the parts of Mt. Tam or Pt. Reyes that I usually explore. I've seen it near Alpine Lake, though. The flowers were low to the ground and partially in the lee of the wind, surrounded mainly by poison oak, but I managed to get one half-decent shot without too much movement.

I'm always glad to finally stumble upon the rare Tiburon mariposa lilies (Calochortus tiburonensis). They don't grow in profusion, but they do stand out.

With the wind less of an issue at this elevation I was able to run off a couple of focus stacks on the amazing, hairy corollas.

The sun peaked out for just a minute, casting the only shadow of the morning.

These two little California ringlets were resting together in the grass, clinging to soaproot buds. They were extremely accommodating as I moved in closer and closer, and they were still just like this when I finally walked away.

I was surprised on my way back down to the car when I looked at my watch and saw that it was only 7:40 a.m. I could have stayed longer and tried to photograph the many wildflower species, but my heart wasn't in it. Had the morning been still and heavy with dew, I might have felt differently.

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May Day

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I always set my clothes and camera gear out in the living room the night before I anticipate leaving on one of my weekend photo safaris while my wife is still sleeping. I tell myself the night before that I might not go. I might decide to sleep in. After all, who wants to get up at 4:30 in the morning on a weekend after getting up early the whole workweek? But then I do wake up, and if it's 3 o'clock or 4:30 I think, "I'll bet I can get out to Point Reyes in time for sunrise." I just can't go back to sleep after I think that.

My plan this morning was to reach Limantour Beach by sunrise. The weather was clear and calm, and I thought I might find a big bloom of bush lupines like I found around this time last year, only last year the sky had been heavily overcast.

As I drove into view of Black Mountain before sunrise I fell in love with the layers of fog over Nicasio Reservoir and had to decide whether to stick to the plan or accept this gift of serendipity. 

I was glad I chose Door Number 2 because Limantour had nothing much going on. As I walked out toward the beach I spotted an elk way off in the distance, walking in shallow water along the shore of the little estero to the northwest. It was kind of silhouetted in front of bright water behind it. I rushed to set up my tripod and get a long lens on the camera, but I only got one frame off before the elk disappeared from view, and even in the frame I got the elk was no longer in just the right spot to make the shot. I would love to get an elk-in-water shot sometime.

I actually thought about heading home but decided to check out a meadow near Muddy Hollow instead. I walked out there in flip-flops and enjoyed the cold dew on my bare feet. There still wasn't any wind, so I was able to make some focus-stacked landscapes that I was pretty happy with.

I wish the blog allowed me to post larger images. I've been posting a few shots on Flickr recently, just to be able to show bigger pix. It'd be even more awesome to have a place where photographers could show large prints in real life. If I ever win the Lottery I promise I'll open up a gallery for people to show their work big and IRL.

So it's May 1st. Supposed to rain again next week, which is cool. Keep it coming.

I got my first tick of the season yesterday.

Which got me thinking abut ticks quite a bit while I was out in the Muddy Hollow meadow.

Especially when I was literally flat out on the soaking ground, my chin and cheek in the grass as I tried to peer through the viewfinder at this neat little flower.

Back at the Muddy Hollow parking lot I noticed what I first thought was a blackberry bramble, then realized that what I was seeing were the berries that Jane Huber had mentioned last year. I had been on the southern end of the trail though and missed out. They're still a bit early, but there were several ripe Pacific salmonberries to be plucked. There I was, eating a banana and a peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich (with delicious rhubarb jam we bought last week in Mendocino), and tossing a fresh vine-picked berry in my mouth every few bites. Sweet.

I found this great little spot full of ferns and stopped to make a few photographs. Check out this black-and-white version I posted on Flickr.

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Northern Exposure

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My wife and I drove up the coast to chill out in Mendocino for a couple of days, and we stopped at Salt Point State Park on the way up to stretch our legs and enjoy some northern exposure.

I think I could photograph the tafoni sandstone formations at Salt Point all day. I spent maybe half an hour in one small area while Pam took in the inspiring seascape and spotted a couple of gray whales heading north and spouting off fairly close to shore.

The tafoni formations are one of those subjects that you never finish exploring. The possibilities are endless and invite many interpretations and compositions. Eventually you have to move on, but you do so knowing you weren't truly done, and that one day you will return to explore some more.

We walked north along the bluffs from the paid ($8) parking area. There was lots of sea pink, or sea thrift, as well as goldfields and iris and poppies. The bloom wasn't as fantastic as I chanced to see it one fine day in May a few years back, but it was still pretty good.

We'd just reached this promising area for more minute exploration, with carpets of purple johnny-tuck and pillows of poppies, when it started to drizzle. We didn't want to head back to the car, but the drizzle kept intensifying, so we made a reluctant retreat and continued our drive up the coast to Mendocino. 

I mainly used my pocket camera in Mendocino and came home with a bunch of tourist pix that I thought I might sprinkle on the blog until I realized it was just too much. After a brief, wonderful stay, we drove down to the headlands this morning for one last look. We were harried by rain yet again, but it was all good.

Springtime in Sonoma and Mendocino counties is awesome, and rain enhances the experience if you let it.

This one little cove was churning with heavy swells, but farther down the coast it wasn't rough at all.

When I first walked out onto the headlands with my wife I only brought my pocket camera, but after seeing how splendid things looked I had to run back to the car for my D800. 

There's nothing quite like this stretch of coast in our neck of the woods. Every now and then it's good to head north and get exposed to something a little different.

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Meadows in the Sun

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An early wake-up got me all the way out to Chimney Rock, at Pt. Reyes National Seashore, before the sun came up.

I half-expected there to be several other photographers out there, maybe even a class, but I saw only one other person the whole time I was out there.

It was much more windy than I'd have liked. I was able to fire off a few landscape shots, but close-ups were pretty much out of the question.

What a difference a couple of weeks has made. It was nice when I came out with my wife a couple of weeks ago, but now there's a whole bunch more flowers and species.

Peregrine falcon bonus, although he doesn't look too pleased to see me.

He didn't really seem to mind the company until another falcon called and he flew away, maybe to a nest site on the cliffs below.

Wight's Indian paintbrush on the bluff tops.

And tidy tips.

Lots of deer around Chimney Rock, as usual.

One more view of Mt. Saint Helena, with flower-packed meadows in the foreground. You can't see them in this little image, but there are lots of deer in the meadow.

Brief coyote sighting. 

I thought about taking off after him, but there was an electric fence between us. I could probably have squeezed through, but it seemed like a long-shot anyway since the coyote quickly dropped out of sight behind the hill.

A small herd of elk enjoys the forage above Drake's Beach.

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