Casual Cat

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I've put the camera trap in this location a couple of times before, but not from this angle. I like this spot because no hikers go here, yet it's close enough to the road that I can easily check on it, even if I'm tuckered out from a day's hike elsewhere on the mountain.

I was hoping to get more of a ground-level view of critters either passing through or stopping for a drink. On Tuesday I caught my first mouse, and only for three frames. Mice don't stay out in the open for long.

On Wednesday a lone turkey hen dropped by to get a drink. She stuck around just long enough to trigger the camera twice, for six frames.

I didn't get another hit until this Steller's jay dropped in on Friday -- yesterday. After I'd walked a good ways away from the set-up last Saturday, I was struck by a thought that ended up nagging me all week. Although I'd set the camera here before, I'd never done so when there was water running in the little defile. 

Would running water set off the camera trap? I was too tired, hungry and lazy to go back and check at the time, which condemned me to a full week of dreading the thought of dead batteries and a memory card full of nothing but riffling water. By mid-week I was thinking about driving all the way up there to check on it, but my loathing of rush-hour traffic was too strong.

As it turned out, I had no more animal-free frames than usual, and if I'd moved the camera somewhere else, I'd have missed this casual bobcat as he strolled through the scene yesterday afternoon. 

It was interesting to see that, even though the water in the scene did move, it didn't trigger the camera. I think the few blank frames I had were due to strong winds blowing and bending the surrounding trees, which made the shadows move.

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Yolanda-Worn Springs Loop

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It was still crazy-windy when I went to bed last night, and I'd planned to remain in bed this morning if it hadn't calmed down. Luckily, it had -- at least enough. I've been planning to return to this spot along the Yolanda Trail since I first saw it just a couple of weeks ago. It was raining then, and the ravine full of California buckeyes wasn't in bloom yet. 

I was glad to get my shot at the break of day because the wind soon came up and spoiled everything. The morning light also got to be a bit much after a while, and I made another plan to return in the winter to shoot a blazing sunset from this spot. Of course, the foreground won't look so lush in winter. 

Anyway, this was really the only image I'd hoped to get today, so I spent the rest of the morning hiking a loop I'd never done before.

The plan was to hike out the Yolanda Trail to the junction where I turned downhill to Hidden Valley on my last trip. This time I would turn uphill at the junction to take the Yolanda to a fire road called the Worn Springs Trail. I figured it wouldn't be much farther to do that than to simply turn around and go back the way I'd come. There are some interesting rock outcrops above the Yolanda Trail, and I figured Worn Springs meandered just behind them.

I figured wrong. Not only was it a good ways to Worn Springs, but Worn Springs itself went steeply uphill at the trail junction. The Worn Springs Trail was not signed, so I had to choose between a gated dirt road that went downhill or the other dirt road that went up in a preposterously steep fashion. I'd brought my map for just such an occasion and regrettably realized I was supposed to go up the steep route. I think the gated route led to someone's home, since I soon saw a pick-up truck on the other side of a wire fence.

Three mountain bikers had passed me heading downhill along the Yolanda Trail, which I found annoying since the trail is narrow and is signed as being off-limits to bikes. Still, I'm amazed anyone rides a bike way up there and can negotiate the narrow trail without mishap. As I was huffing and puffing up the steepest part of the Worn Springs Trail I noticed someone was coming up behind me. And he was running. Not only that, but I think he was probably at least five years older than me.

The route rises way above the Yolanda Trail to an elevation of about 1,100 feet, then heads steeply back down to Phoenix Lake at about 200 feet, for about a five-and-half-mile round trip. The views are great up there, but it was quite windy and a bit chilly.The little sawtooth shape on the distant horizon is the San Francisco skyline.

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Cache Transaction

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Heading up the Panoramic Highway this morning I had mixed feelings about the chaparral pea growing by the side of the road. Sure, I was glad to see the pretty blossoms. But I'm not a big fan of roadside photography. I like wild things, nature photography. Not pictures with roads in them. Nevertheless, I put my bias aside and hit the brakes to back up into a small turn-out. I've noticed that for a lot of photographers who visit Mt. Tam, the road itself is as much the subject as the landscape that surrounds it. And that's certainly the case for a lot of ad agencies marketing automobiles.

In any event, I was able to make a couple of pictures of the chaparral pea blossoms with only one car passing by, heading downhill, and I was glad I'd made the stop. I know the species grows higher up the mountain, but there was no guarantee it would be in bloom yet. 

When I finished with the pea flowers and continued driving up the mountain I soon spotted a significant bloom of western azalea, a species I'd particularly hoped to find today. I know it blooms along this south-facing roadside earlier than it does at my planned hiking destination of Potrero Meadow, but this time I decided not to stop. I guess I couldn't put aside my bias again quite that soon after my previous effort.

Once again I was waylaid by the simple beauty of Bolinas Ridge. This time it was easy to delay my hiking plans and stop for a little detour.

Springtime on Bolinas Ridge. What a great time of the year.

I finally got my hike under way and was surprised to find "fall color" in some fallen madrone leaves near the point where the Benstein Trail turns off the Lagunitas-Rock Spring fire road to drop down to Potrero Meadow.

There were a few azaleas blooming at Potrero Meadow, but I would say the full bloom of the northside azaleas (in their various locations) is still two or three weeks away. I probably wouldn't even have tried my luck this early, but I wanted to pick up the trail camera which I'd set out along the route to the meadow.

That there were so few flowers in bloom didn't really matter for my photographic purposes.

If I just wanted to photograph azaleas, and not "azaleas on Mt. Tam," I could have walked out my front door and found some growing in my neighborhood. It's funny, I guess, but I have no interest whatsoever in photographing azaleas in my neighborhood. But driving all the way up to Mt. Tam and hiking a few miles to find them growing on the edge of a meadow? Heck, yeah!

"Hmmm," I thought when I spotted something blue in the shrubbery. "An old beer bottle?"

A closer look revealed it was a geocache. When I got home, a quick google search revealed that it was this guy's geocache, set out almost three years ago, on August 9, 2011.

Here's what various geocache folks have left in the box since it's been out there. I'd have signed the log book, but the pen had dried out, so I left a calling card before placing it back where I found it. The logo on the gold foil packet is an Italian auto repair service, as near as I can tell. I guess it must be a gasket or seal of some kind.

Out in the meadow, my favorite orange-and-black plant bugs were having unprotected sex on the female plants of some meadow rue. (I'm thinking these are more likely to be Cosmopepla uhleri, actually.) I doubt the gold packet in the geocache would have been useful to them, however.

Wild rose.

Sitting out here with the iris in the middle of Potrero Meadow, the scent of onion was strong. All around me, wild onion plants were sprouting. They were probably a couple of weeks away from blooming. I also looked for the jimson weed that grows in the area but found no trace of it, outside of last year's stalks.

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Fawn Fest

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The camera trap has been out in this spot since mid-April, the same week Pam and I camped at Steep Ravine. Seems like a lifetime ago. The camera was just far enough from the trailhead that I haven't felt like making the hike to pick it up. I had put the camera in this spot once before, just for a day, and caught a buck. This time it was all doe deer -- the adults, that is.

Kind of funny to have caught a coyote out for a mid-day stroll on a Saturday. Every image from April 18 to the day I picked up the camera on May 3 was captured in daylight. This was an obvious animal trail, but I was surprised to see that it was used only in the daytime.

I only caught the coyote once, and I only caught the jackrabbit once -- on Easter Sunday.

Although the camera caught deer almost every day, it only captured the star attraction twice.

I don't believe I have ever been able to photograph spotted fawns on Mt. Tam in the usual way [oops, see below], and in fact I'm not sure I've gotten a good look at such a young fawn since I saw a bobcat pounce on one back in the early '90s. (The fawn screamed; its mother rushed to its aid and chased the bobcat up a nearby Douglas fir tree.)

The camera just barely caught one more fawn, in only one frame, as it leaped toward the safety of the nearby chaparral and forest.

I was going to place the camera in one last location (as far as this blog is concerned), but I finally got the "battery low" warning for the first time since I first put the camera out, back in October, so I brought the camera home.

Just looking over some older pix, I found this shot of spotted fawns from May 21, 2010.

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April Favorites

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The towering redwoods I see from my living room remind me of an ancient age when dinosaurs roamed here. And hiding among the grasses are subtle echoes of even earlier eras: spiders and snails, humble pioneers of life’s experimentation with an existence on land. I recognize them now, as I do myself, as separate strands of life, woven together by time into a tapestry of nature that is connected in the present as well as linked to the past.

--Frans Lanting, from Life: A Journey Through Time

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Lupine Sunrise

Frog in the Moss

End of the Line

Partners

Lizard Man

Steep Ravine

Emergence

Spring Greens

Duskywing & Clover

March Flies

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An Old Map's Trail

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I don't always stop to photograph wild turkeys when I see them, but every now and then I can't resist, and I've been seeing them a lot lately. Courtship displays started back in November or December, but they are still going on. I have yet to see any turkey chicks, but I imagine there's more than one brood per year. From what I read, a hen might lay nearly a dozen eggs at a time, and they take only 28 days to hatch.

You'd think with that many chicks potentially running around, I couldn't miss seeing them. But I don't believe I ever have. Wild things have their ways.

The jackrabbits are out and acting frisky in all the fresh green grass. I watched two meet up and chase around like squirrels before settling back down to keep an eye on an encroaching photographer.

The big surprise when I got out of the Jeep to photograph the turkeys was how cold it was! I saw the sun shining and went up in short pants. Thankfully I at least had a windbreaker because I believe it was the wind chill that was really getting to me. My fingers were almost numb in minutes, and I was glad to finally get back to the warm Jeep. Even though I knew it was going to be cold out, I still couldn't resist making a stop here for the beautiful light. I'd stop here again on the way home a few hours later and watch several turkeys in a courtship ritual on one of the near ridges. They must never quit.

The gate out to West Ridgecrest was open early, so I headed on out to my trailhead destination. If the gate had been closed, the plan was to check out the trail camera before starting the day's hike. In the end I decided to leave the trail camera alone until next week.

The light was kind of nice as I drove out along Bolinas Ridge, so I kept my eyes peeled for wildlife. These two deer were resting right at the edge between a meadow and the woods, maybe fifty feet apart from each other. The deer below the lichen-crusted branch is a young buck, with very tentative yet velveted antlers. I'm proud to say that I took my pictures and was on my way without either deer rising from its bed.

Despite yesterday's cloudy, rainy weather, or maybe because of it, the air today was clear as a bell. I thought it might even be clear enough to see the newly snow-covered Sierras again, but it was not. Here you can just make out Pt. Reyes' Chimney Rock in the distance. A group of hikers is taking a confab near the center of the frame. The hikers are near the junction of the Coastal Trail and the Willow Camp Fire Trail, which is where I expected to be in a few hours (after beginning my hike a little farther north).

After having no luck spotting bobcats in the nice light, I finally got under way with the hike I'd planned for the day, which was to drop down the McKinnon Trail toward Stinson Beach, then hike south along the bottom of the ridge, pick up the Willow Camp Trail to hike back up to the Coastal Trail and finally get back to the Jeep. The sign at the trailhead said the McKinnon Trail was only 0.12 miles long. But that only gets you as far as a stone bench with a nice view.

I'd never before hiked the route I was attempting today, but I'd been on forays part-way down. So I knew the trail was lightly used and I was not perturbed by the lack of signs beyond the stone bench. My old 1989 Olmsted map shows not just a trail, but a fire road, that leads down the hill. I think you can still see a trace of the old fire road near the top of the hike, but it peters out into a faint trail with little more sign of any passage than a few bobcat and coyotes scats, as well as some deep deer tracks probably made when the ground was soft after a rain.

I was happily surprised to find this weird member of the mustard family growing along the trail. I've never seen this species before, and there were only three plants growing in a small area. I imagined I'd found one of the most rare plants on the entire mountain. I tried to look it up when I got home to no avail. Instead of being the last remaining stronghold of a nearly extinct Mt. Tam endemic, though, it's probably either something that grows in huge fields somewhere else, or it's some sort of Mediterranean weed.

The spotted coral root are still in bloom. I can't remember if I mentioned already that these plants, which lack chlorophyll and do not photosynthesize, get their food by parasitizing fungi. And not just any fungi, but fungi in the Russula family.

Following the trail down past the first meadow and into the woods, you soon run into the old pig fence. Feral pigs used to root around Mt. Tam and were considered to be something of an ecological nightmare. The pigs were chased into the fence, then herded toward waiting riflemen. The only wild pig up here now is the Wild Boar Half Marathon. 

This is not a member of the Russula family and has nothing to fear from parasitic orchids.

I kept looking at my back-trail as I descended what I presumed to be the steep remnant of the McKenna Trail, thinking that I sure didn't want to have to hike back up that way. Here I've recently emerged from the woods into an expansive meadow. You can just make out the trail near the center of the frame. When I finally reached the woods you see farther down the hill, even this modest game trail petered out. To continue would have required bushwhacking down to the cross-trail that would take me south to the Willow Camp Trail junction. Maybe I will try that sometime when I'm not carrying so much camera gear, but on this occasion I decided to turn around and head back up. Sometimes an exploration goes that way. I'm reading a book right now about early polar exploration, and my little trip on Mt. Tam turned out a whole lot better.

The return trip was ridiculously steep but not crazy-difficult. One foot in front of the other, and eventually you get there. I hadn't even paid attention to this chert outcrop on the way down, so I took the opportunity to rest and photograph it on the way back up. I wondered what the explanation is for those layers. I mean, it's pretty obvious there are layers, right? It's not just one continuous slab. These rocks are believed to have formed on the Jurassic seabed. Presumably, the creatures that lived in the oceans died and sank to the bottom. So what's the explanation for the layers? Are they composed of different organisms? And if so, I have follow-up questions!

Finally back at the top of the hill near the trailhead, I take in one last view before heading home. One nice thing about having hiked back up the hill -- I was no longer the least bit cold.

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