Bobcats & Wildflowers

The Meadow King, Tennessee Valley

The Iris Field, Pt. Reyes

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The Scent Post

Morning Bobcat
(clip from video)

View Larger at YouTube

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Chaparral Cam

You'd think the neighborhood gray fox contingent would be used to seeing trail cams by now, but I keep moving them around. Surprise! Sorry, buddy. At least there's no real harm. Although I'm not planning to move the cams anymore for a little while, I realize they will take some getting used to.

None of the three trail cams I've had out for the last two weeks caught any buck deer with antlers, so I'm wondering whether everyone's lost their antlers by now, or if they've simply wandered out of the area after making the does hapai. 

The cam doesn't glow with an array of red lights in the daytime and is easier to ignore, although it does still making a faint clicking sound when it fires. Here the fox goes toward the woods at 8:50 a.m.

Only to come back at a trot nearly 10 minutes later.

Hermit thrush.

Yikes! Sorry!

Five days later the fox doesn't seem to mind the cam at all. I can't tell if he's thinking about snagging that flying insect. I set this cam to shoot stills only, although when I reset it on Friday I changed it back to stills and 10-second videos.

I'm wondering if the trail cams will know it's a leap year.

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Coyote Bliss

This was the view when I arrived in the early morning, sometime between 7 and 7:30, which is when I usually get to work on a Friday but, especially since I didn't get out of the city last week, I was feeling the need for some mountain magic, and luckily I was able to take the day off.

When I stopped at the same spot on my way home I was surprised to find a coyote snoozing in the grass, and surprised again when he didn't run off. I hadn't brought my Nikon gear since I'd only planned to check my camera traps and just roam around to let the mountain drain the poisons of so-called civilization out of me. (It was warm, with virtually no wind, and might have been a good day to bring a book to read, but I'm on the last chapter of Jared Diamond's Upheaval - Turning Points for Nations in Crisis, and, well, Wrong Book to bring to a nature reboot.)

I put my phone cam up to one side of my binoculars to get a shot of the coyote snoozing...

...and blissing out in the warm sunshine.

I followed the coyote around on his circuit after he finally got up. He crossed the road and poked around the Sunset Point meadow, the re-crossed the road to head out toward these calla lilies where he lapped up some muddy water before continuing out the trail to the right, then doubling back on a lower trail (red circle). He caught several small critters that weren't gophers, and which I can only guess were grasshoppers or some other small insect.

I also collected some toyon berries in the hope of getting at least one to sprout in my back yard.

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Children's Garden

At Strybing Arboretum

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Alamere Falls

In a wetter year.

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Wet vs. Dry

Kind of a sad state of affairs to be crunching around in the woods on a bed of dried oak leaves in February. I just came across this old comparison image of Upper Cataract Falls in a wet December 2012 vs. a dry January 2014. As I hiked out to set some camera traps this morning I thought, "The mushrooms were not fooled." They didn't take off in a flush of fruitings despite some decent, if oddly timed, rainfall this season. 

I only had my phone camera with me today. It was colder than it looked, and quite windy. One change since I last hiked out this way was the burned slash piles. You could still smell the burnt wood. A couple of the piles, like this one, were maybe a tad close to the forest edge, judging by all the killed leaves on this live oak.

After I'd set the third trail cam I looped back to the main trail and was cheered to see my first pink wildflower of the season. From a distance I assumed it was a checkerbloom, but as I got closer I saw it was a calypso orchid.

Before I made it back to the main trail I found a nice sit-spot, a small flat area covered with leaves and not too many branches, with a rock just right for leaning back on, some warming sunshine, and an interesting view, and enjoyed just looking out over the chaparral and the edge of the woods, and listening to the chatter of acorn woodpeckers and the screeches of scrub jays. I also encountered this oak tree whose branches supported more moss and lichen than leaves of its own.

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