Making the Big Bucks

 

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Freaky Fungi

 

Psychedelic concentrics: turkey tails radiate from the wet and weathered wood of a coast live oak.

Okay, I'll admit, all fungi are pretty freaky. But in a world where our own human bellies harbor bacteria that have their own genomes and life cycles, and also have the ability to affect our moods and even make us crazy, then what isn't freaky? 

I like that of all the "mushrooms" I photographed this morning, only one looks like an actual mushroom.

I'm not even sure whether this is a cup fungus or a slime mold. I've never seen it before. [UPDATE: I believe this is Cannonball Fungus (Sphaerobolus stellatus).]

Here's a larger group of them. (As always, you can click on an image to make it bigger.)

Nearby were these Eyelash Cup Fungi, with the mellifluous scientific name of Scutellinia scutellata.

A two-headed toothed jelly fungus.

Smiling coral fungus.

Same set-up (let's call it Still Life with Coral Fungus, Lichen, Mushroom, Polypody, and Bay Laurel Leaves), but pulled back a little. I especially liked the mottled bay laurel leaves, and now that I'm home I wish I'd thought to photograph them seperately.

I've always called these fun guys Stump Bubbles, but I'm embarrassed -- nay, mortified -- to say that I've never actually tried to key them out, although I did kinda sorta think they were Psathyrella sp. I took a phone snap of them to see if my little ID app could handle them, but I wasn't sure if the app was correct -- until I also checked iNaturalist's Mt. Tamalpais collection. So it looks like they are called Common Stump Brittlestem (Psathyrella piluliformis), but I'm going to stick with stump bubbles.

I was surprised to find this bear's head fungus still going strong today. I last saw it  the last time I went up to check on my trail cams on 12/10/23.

Wow, a new year and we get bobcats galore!? I wish. This is a composite of still frames from a video clip.

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More Mendo & Bits

 

Mendocino Headlands

Something for a rainy day. A few more pix from Mendocino, plus a little urban mushroom action.

We couldn't resist pulling off the road at the Navarro Winery entrance when this rainbow appeared along Hwy. 128. The photo file info recorded this shot at 1:13 p.m. (but it was actually 12:13 p.m. since I forgot to turn off DST), which explains why the rainbow is arcing so low over the ground (high sun angle). Both ends of the bow touched the ground seemingly just a few feet in front of us, making it a piece of cake to find the treasure.

We'd never seen so many brown pelicans on the sea stacks before. We're actually more used to seeing lots of Canada geese feeding on the grassy tops, but this year there were none (and very little grass left for them to feed on). 

Along with the pelicans, a bunch of cormorants were huddled up.

Looking at sea stacks from Mendocino Headlands toward Russian Gulch State Park on one of the clear days.

Sea stack island with the Russian Gulch Bridge in the background.

View from Russian Gulch back toward Mendocino.

View from the North Trail at Russian Gulch.

The bird feeder at our cottage had probably been empty for a long time before we got there. We filled it up on day one, but the birds didn't find it until day four.

View from our kitchen window.

I was surprised to find several mushrooms growing in my pot of Coast Live Oaks, which I started from acorns collected on Mt. Tam a few years ago. I picked two of the shrooms for identification purposes before I took this picture, so it was actually a bit more crowded. I had just been looking for our cat in my neighbor's yard and found a couple of beautiful and edible blewits under his oak (which also grew from an acorn he planted in the late '60s). Unfortunately, my shrooms turned out to be Hebeloma crustuliniforme, or Poison Pie. I wonder if the spores came with the acorns themselves, since the soil came from Sloat Garden Center.

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Over Time

UCSF Demolition, 9/29/2023

UCSF Demolition, 12/22/2023

Photographs are a great memory aid, and I've always enjoyed "before and after" or "then and now" photos. A couple of things I kept track of over time as I did my city walks last year were the demolition of some old buildings at UCSF's Parnassus Heights campus, an eyesore parklet on Irving Street, and a neighborhood trash dump on Noriega Street. 

The UCSF demolition is really the only one that started out as a before-and-after. The parklet and the trash dump provided unanticipated changes.

The trash dump was actually part of a series that I posted back in May, and I never anticipated the surprise ending. 

The parklet was interesting to me because it was such an over-the-top, hideous disgrace on Irving Street. Eventually the restaurant had someone paint a mural over the graffiti. It was looking good for a while, but the muralist paused work for so long at one point that taggers eventually began to reclaim the territory.

Noriega Street Trash Dump, 1/18/2023

How to Fix a Trash Dump, 12/27/2023

Pandemic Parklet at 16th & Irving, 4/26/2023

Pandemic Parklet at 16th & Irving, 12/27/2023

Parklet gone (no parking meters yet either)! As of 4/10/2024.
[UPDATE]

Coco the Cat, 1/19/2023

Coco the Cat, 12/22/2023

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Mendo Moments

 

Sunset at Mendocino Headlands, 12/31/2023

We were lucky to get a nice mix of sun and rain the last few days. The clearing skies gave us beautiful sunsets and hiking opportunities at Jug Handle State Reserve, Russian Gulch State Park, and the Pt. Cabrillo Lighthouse, as well as around the town and headlands of Mendocino. And when we were indoors, enjoying a warm and cozy cottage, the sound of rain on the roof and skylights was music to our ears. Here's to a great year in 2024.

Mendocino Headlands, 12/30/2023

Crepuscular Rays at Sunset

Sea Stacks at the Headlands

Last Light

Last Flight

Sundown at the Headlands

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Ocean Beach

 

December Sunset

The forecast for large swells today did not disappoint. I went to Cliff House to record the festivities as best I could with the FZ-80, but the resulting images are somewhat disappointing, quality-wise. 

There was so little contrast in the scene that the autofocus kept hunting for a subject, so I switched to manual focus despite being unable to really gauge sharpness through the tiny viewfinder. I also ran the "dehaze" slider pretty high in Lightroom to try to bring out some contrast, which also brought out a lot of noise.

All of which led me to add a few December-at-Ocean-Beach shots from my files, just to have something a little nicer to look at in the post.

Anyway, the swells were definitely much bigger than they were in my last post, although as "surf," it was completely untenable without even the slightest offshore wind to tighten up the waves. Instead of three or four guys out, there appeared to be nobody crazy enough to be out. 

It was interesting to see the ocean crashing right up against the bluffs below the old Cliff House, and even pouring into Sutro Baths. Check out the video below.

Wave Action at the Old Cliff House

I thought this was going to be the peak of the action as the wave struck Seal Rocks...

...but in the next moment, the wave exploded right over the rocks.

Cleaner Lines and Hollow Sections
(December 26, 2013)

The Right Stuff

See you next year!

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Swell View

 

Wave Power at Seal Rocks

I walked down to Ocean Beach just as the 6.7-foot high tide was beginning to recede, and I was awed by the huge swells breaking in front of Noriega and Ortega streets. A lone photographer was stationed on the dunes waiting for the two or three surfers brave and/or crazy enough to be out there to catch a wave. I watched one of the surfers paddle like mad and just barely catch one of the larger waves, only to fall off his board and drop like a stone off a cliff. Even that wasn't the end, though, as I next saw him getting sucked over the falls. 

Imagine grabbing a breath as you fall off your board, and instead of the wave just going over you, it sucks you up into its vortex and pounds you back down into the ocean. You come up for air but the foam is briefly so thick you can't take another breath. People die out there, and I was glad when I spotted the guy paddling back out once the churning whitewater cleared enough to give me a view.

After I got home I went back down on my bike. No one was surfing near the Cliff House, and I don't think there were more than one or two guys out as far south as Lincoln Way. Nevertheless, the waves were making a spectacle of themselves, and I enjoyed it for a good while before finally tearing myself away to go home for lunch.

Video clip from the old Cliff House.

Note the breaking wave way off the coast in the upper left, in a spot called the Potato Patch. Assuming a water depth there of 23-36 feet, wave heights have to be 17-27 feet to break there.

Long view from Cliff House to Point Bonita Lighthouse.

More large swells breaking way, way outside.

Closer to shore....

Fishing from the Cliff House.

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