Mountain Music

Mountain Pool

There's a nondescript pool of water along the Mill Valley-Sausalito Pathway. It's not attractive in any way, not even to the birds, but I always figured it would catch a reflection of Mt. Tam. It's one of those scenes you know is always going to be there, so you tell yourself, "Maybe next time." Well, once again yesterday I was pedaling at cruising speed, closing in on my turn-off to Coyote Creek, and thinking "maybe next time," when I hit the brakes and pulled off the path to get it done. Procrastinating until the return trip doesn't work because the wind always comes up and ruffles the mirrored surface.

Having shot one reflection of the mountain, I was in the mood to collect another when I saw three black-necked stilts resting on the far edge of Coyote Creek, which was pretty close to its 4.9-foot high tide mark for the day.

It was another beautiful day for a ride on the mountain, sunny and warm, almost spring-like. Even a patch of western azalea along Panoramic Highway thought so. It's interesting to see these flowers blooming in October since they usually bloom around May or June on Mt. Tam. Farther up the mountain, and more seasonally correct, the scarlet blossoms of California fuchsia are still going strong, and in the woods I found a large dyer's polypore.

The camera trap pool looked pitifully small again, and to make it even worse its surface was covered with a powdery substance called "powder down" that indicated band-tailed pigeons had been bathing in the pool. A quick review of the first few images captured on the camera revealed pigeons and also numerous virtually empty frames that likely had been tripped by dragonflies whizzing by. It was all just a little too disappointing, so I decided to move the cam to a new location. I also brought the new GardePro cam and set it out as well. 

I was scouting new locations when I surprised a gray squirrel that, instead of immediately bounding away, actually moved a little closer to see what manner of intruder was infringing on his turf. I almost never get a chance to photograph squirrels on Mt. Tam because they tend to keep their distance from humans. But maybe they are slightly more territorial now that it's acorn-collecting season.

A couple of tiny downy feathers lying on top of the forest duff caught my attention, and I'm going to guess they came from a band-tailed pigeon. Some red-breasted nuthatches were calling to each other as they searched for insects in the trees. They were too quick to catch with the FZ80, so I settled for a dark-eyed junco. The junco initially fluttered up from the ground to the far side of the tree trunk, but I had a feeling he would eventually make his way up to the mossy look-out and reveal himself.

There were a few trucks parked at Rock Spring, getting ready for the Sound Summit on Saturday. The music festival was called the Mt. Tam Jam when it started back in June 2013 (but had to be changed after some legal scrimmaging). I had just deleted all my blog posts going back to 2007 in order to start a one-year project exploring the mountain, thinking I would quit the blog after that year. We went to the Tam Jam in that first month of the "new" blog. The festival was the first on Mt. Tam since 1967, when bands like The Doors and the Steve Miller Band played. Another band at that festival was called Moby Grape, which I mention in part because I love the name, but also because its lead guitar player has a daughter who's having a baby with one of my nephews next month. Yay! 

Black-Necked Stilts on Coyote Creek

October Azaleas On Panoramic Highway

Dyer's Polypore

Video Screen-Captures of Band-Tailed Pigeons

Feisty Gray Squirrel

Downy Feathers

Junco on the Look-out

The lower branches of dead these trees near Rock Spring were preened for wildfire protection not too long ago, but I'm guessing the yellow ribbons tied around the old fir trees have marked them for removal.

Camera Trap Clips

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Surf's Up!

 

Most days my bike ride takes me down to the beach, and I noticed yesterday that a little swell had come in, along with a slightly offshore breeze. When I got home I checked the swell forecast and it looked like it was going to improve today (and possibly get even bigger throughout the week), so I planned to bring my FZ80 down to the beach (at Noriega Street) on my morning walk today. I wasn't sure the little camera would be able to capture action shots, but it did okay in the somewhat diffuse morning light. You only get one chance to trip the shutter, though, because by the time the image writes to the SD card and the viewfinder refreshes, the ride is usually over.

After I walked back home I got on my bike to shoot some other locations, hoping to find a surfer or two who could really rip. I thought I'd start on the bluffs near the Giant Camera, but just like yesterday, Kelly's Cove was not catching the swell, so my first stop was along the Esplanade. From there I rode south along the Upper Great Highway (which is open to cars again), making stops at Rivera and Sloat. In the end, there was no "best" location with the most ripping surfers on the best waves, so just about anywhere is a good spot to check out the action.

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GardePro A3 Trail Camera

 

Coco Cam #1 (Foxelli cam)

Coco Cam #2 (GardePro cam from same vantage point as Foxelli, w/o Info Strip)

GardePro Cam With Info Strip

I had high hopes for this new GardePro trail camera, and it is capable of capturing higher resolution images than my old Foxelli cams (which I bought in the summer of 2019; I'm not sure the company still sells trail cams). 

On the plus side, the GardePro's nighttime flash doesn't blow out the subject, the low light capture is better, and it uses "no glow" LEDs instead of "low glow" LEDs. An interesting feature is the ability to set a different video capture length for daytime or nighttime. You can also set the camera's hours of operation. 

The big disappointment, really, is that the field of view and image frame are so small compared to the Foxelli that the GardePro seems claustrophobic. To make it worse, the GardePro information strip takes up a significant amount of real estate within the frame, instead of being outside the frame. The info strip can be turned off, but then you have to go into the exif data of each image to find out the time and date it was made.

But getting back to the image size issue, a standard 35mm image size is 4 x 6 inches; the Foxelli compares at 4.5 x 6 (same as my smartphone); and the GardePro at relatively narrow 3.375 x 6.  

I paid $67.88 for my A3 on Amazon and noticed that the same model was no longer available the day after mine arrived (although it still shows up on the manufacturer's web site). It has been replaced on Amazon by the A3S which lists for $94.99. 

Of the five Foxelli cams I bought in 2019, only one still works perfectly. One was stolen, one was lost in a flood, one only works properly at night, and one stopped working altogether. I figured it was time to get a second cam, but if you've ever checked, you know there is a mind-boggling array of trail camera brands and models out there. The technology has definitely improved since 2019, though, so even a sub-$100 off-the-shelf trail cam like the GardePro A3 (voted Best Budget Cam by Popular Mechanics) is pretty decent. 

The latest issue of Outdoor Photographer has a nice trail cam article in it, by the way. The photographer, Roy Toft, uses 35mm cameras to get high quality images. OP asks him how his Wild Ramona project got started, and he said, "We have a chunk of property behind our house, and it's pretty wild. Even though there are houses around the rim of it, there's cool stuff down there. I'd see occasional things, but I know there are many things I don't see. So, I started putting little trail cams, hundred-dollar trail cams, down there. You get your odd raccoon and opossum and bobcat and get excited, but it was just these crummy clips. I was doing it for video just to see what's there."

GardePro 15-Second Video Clip

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Herring Attraction

 

The Lunch Crowd at Richardson Bay

As I was biking up to Mt. Tam yesterday I noticed numerous egrets and herons gathered together along the edge of Richardson Bay near the float planes. Just as I began to wonder what they were doing, they took wing and glided toward me. That's when I noticed the moving raft of pelicans and cormorants just offshore, apparently giving chase to a school of herring. It was all about being a diving bird until the fish swam close to shore, and then the wading birds got their chance.

Farther along, two pairs of black-necked stilts were working the small ponds along the Coyote Creek boardwalk, where the tide was still rising. By the time I rode home, the 4.8-foot peak tide was on its way out, but the lowlands were swamped and the birds were gone. Today's high tide will be 5.5 feet, probably still not quite high enough to drown the Mill Valley-Sausalito Pathway, but a good reminder to check the tide tables before riding out there. I found the path swamped last December shortly after a 6.7-foot high tide.

Once I got above the fog, the forest along twisting Panoramic Highway was sunny and beautifully cool, a perfect day for a ride. Only after I got close to Rock Spring did the warm air overwhelm the cool breeze. There was also a pleasant natural scent on the wind that I couldn't place, but it definitely wasn't rosinweed anymore. They bay nuts are ripening, and acorns were bouncing loudly off cars parked beneath the oaks. The coyote brush I photographed two weeks ago was nearly done, but others nearby were still teeming with insect life. I've been wondering if coyote brush got its name from the brush-like female flowers, and that's why we don't just call it coyote bush.

I checked up on the trail camera and was surprised and disappointed to see how small the pool has gotten. Rocks that were underwater just two weeks ago are now jutting an inch or so above the surface. The pool no longer looks like the kind of place that would draw in wildlife from all over, that's for sure, and there's no rain in the forecast for the rest of the month. The camera recorded about 80 captures, with most of them being dragonflies, and a few frames of the usual suspects like fox, squirrel, raccoon, screech owl, and band-tailed pigeon. But with the exception of squirrels, even the usual suspects only passed through once in two weeks. 

Snowy Gets A Fish

Close Crop of Previous Photo

Diving Birds and Wading Birds

Black-Necked Stilt and Pickleweed

This is one of two not-so-giant salamanders I saw in the shrinking camera trap pool. They must hide very well at night to escape the probing paws of passing raccoons.

Flying Squirrel

Trail Cam Clips

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Fall at Pt. Reyes, Pt. 2

 

Sculptured Beach
(as always, click images to view larger)

Shore Crab

Black Oystercatcher

Sunrise on Lagunitas Creek

Reef at Drake's Beach, No. 1

Coyote in the Road

Moon and Surf Fisher, North Beach

Uncaptioned Far Side Cartoon

Reef at Drake's Beach, No. 2

The Sand Crab Hunters

Marbled Godwits

Murre Tangled in Fishing Gear

Mt. Wittenberg

Point Reyes

Spreading Oak

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Fall at Pt. Reyes, Pt. 1

 

Just Before Sunrise at Drake's Beach

Sunrise On the Bluffs

Down Low in the North Beach Dunes

Community of Plants, North Beach Dunes

Bull Elk Catching Scent

Elk Cows

Ochre Sea Stars Piling Into Bed of Mussels

Pierce Ranch

A Bull Elk Prepares to Bugle...

Reveille!

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