Curious Camera

* * *

I was disappointed to see that I'd pointed the camera too high. I'd hoped to catch wildlife drinking in the little stream that's just below the frame in these shots. This deer dropped by on Sunday evening and noticed the flashing red rectangle right away.

This might be the same mama deer taking an even closer look the following morning. I'd half-expected to find the camera dislodged from the boulder where I set it up, lying face-down on the ground, or maybe even having rolled into the stream. But it didn't get touched.

The little bambino dropped by a little later in the day.

One of the little bambinos even checked out the camera that afternoon. Besides these Sunday night-to-Monday critters, no other animals passed through the tree gate all week, but I had numerous false triggers due to tree limbs blowing in the wind. I'll come back to this spot later in the season, but for now I'd like to find someplace completely different.

* * *

May Favorites

* * *

Yet this is our conviction and invitation: to let yourself slip, with the faith of a child, into this natural California and so invite wonder, worship, and gratitude for the simple joys of being alive. Along the way, may you hear the whisper of the sacred, which is everything.

--James Lawrence, from essay in California
by David Muench and Marc Muench

* * *

Memorial

Take-off!

Mule Ears

Clintonia

Horsetail Meadow

Crane Fly

Spring Fling

Spotted Coral Root

Deer Trio

Bush Poppy

* * *

Going Buggy

* * *

I got to the gate a little before 7 a.m. and was surprised to see the sun already shining on the "Mount Tamalpais State Park" sign. I mentioned to the ranger who came to unlock the gate how weird that seemed since it was still so dark at this time of day just a few months ago, and she agreed, saying she feels like she's running late when it's this light out.

I was the first car through the gate and stopped to check out this vista point. I photographed a gorgeous post-7a.m. sunrise from here not that long ago.

By 7 a.m. these days the good light is almost over already. Almost.

I was a little disappointed to find it so windy on the mountain, but at least I'd left the cold and fog back in San Francisco. I was surprised to see how tall the grass has gotten in the meadow at Rock Spring, so I took a picture. 

I had the whole place to myself, and I enjoyed just poking around at a leisurely pace. In fact, I stopped so often and for so long that "pace" is probably not the right word for what I was doing. 

I tried not to be creeped out by finding European earwigs (etymology) in the mule ears blossoms. I suppose that old Night Gallery episode is responsible for some of the cringiness of them. They're actually kind of cute when they're just lounging around and eating nectar or pollen or whatever. It's only when they "scuttle" that they seem creepy, especially if they're scuttling toward you.

According to Powell and Hogue, this is the most abundant species in California, but it wasn't known in the state until 1923. It's interesting to think of the first earwigs coming over to California in some very specific location(s), then spreading out over much of the state. They are omnivorous, feeding on plants as well as dead and living insects, including aphids. When these guys realized they were being watched, they scuttled to the underside of the flower, returning topside when the coast seemed clear. Almost every mule ear blossom in this part of the meadow had a resident earwig.

There were many more species of grass in the meadow than I would ever have the patience or skill to identify, and you've got to hand it to the grasses for finding so many ways to express themselves.

The tiny beetle climbed up the grass stalk and flew away.

A little farther down the trail I spotted my first foxglove flowers of the season, though I've been watching the plants come up for a few weeks.

Here, a beetle forages on a cluster of blue dicks. Apparently you can know by the wing coloration of this species that this particular beetle is female. It's common name is dimorphic flower longhorn beetle.

I finally found a spot that was protected from the wind, allowing me to run the only focus stack of the morning on this checker bloom with a frothy mass of spittlebug larvae attached. 

On a much more "mature" checker bloom blossom I found this other species of flower longhorn beetle. I see this beetle every year and know it must be very common, but it's not covered in Powell & Hogue.

I guess it was just last week when Pam and I were hiking farther down the mountain that I couldn't recall if I'd ever actually seen one of these clicking critters. You hear them in the trees all around, but if you try to walk over toward the tick-tick-tick sound, it abruptly stops before you can zero in on it. I spotted this one because it was fluttering around on the ground next to the trail. It eventually climbed up onto this grass stalk where it was kind enough to allow me to photograph it at my leisure. 

To give you an idea how small these woodland cicadas are, my macro lens was set a 1:1 ratio in this shot, which is shown full-frame. Their genus, Platypedia, would appear to mean "flatfooted," which does not seem like their most obvious trait, if you ask me. There are 18 species in the genus in California, mostly in the northern half of the state.

I didn't go far down the trail before I turned around and headed back to the Jeep. I stopped along a drying-out seasonal streambed to look for snakes, but only found these witch's teeth.

I didn't find a snake until I almost ran over this sunbathing gopher snake. I didn't see him in time to stop, but I was at least able to drive over him without running him over. I parked just up the road and returned to snap this picture with the 50mm, then I nudged the snake so he'd slither off the road and into cover. As soon as I touched him, he reared up as if to strike, then hissed at me and slithered into the grass. Once he was all the way in the grass, he hissed again even louder for good measure.

I drove out along the road a ways to look for more snakes sunning themselves, but didn't see any more until the return trip. This small, baby rattlesnake was in the middle of the returning lane and had not been as lucky as the gopher snake. This little guy had to have been killed only a short time before I saw him since he hadn't been there when I first drove by.

I set him on this rock to get a better look at him, but the Jeep was idling in the middle of the road, so I made a quick snap and got moving again.

When I got home I found the latest ("final"?) version of my Mt. Tam book, which includes many of the D800E images I shot during the year of this blog. I got it with Blurb's highest quality papers, and it cost just over $200 with tax and shipping. You wouldn't want to spend that much on something for yourself -- but if you're lucky, maybe you'll get one as a gift. 

* * *

Raccoon & Fawns

* * *

I moved the camera to the other side of the little stream and strapped it to a higher tree branch for a different angle. I used this same branch once before and have caught raccoons here before as well.

At first I thought this was another frame of the same raccoon on the same night, and then I thought I was mistaken because the dates were different. But I wasn't mistaken. Same night, different sides of midnight.

These could very well be the two spotted fawns I caught in a previous camera trap just up the hill from this location.

The fawns were all over this little stream.

But I never caught mama.

Last fall this spot was getting quite a few visits from full-grown deer. Now these fawns will know about this spot and return throughout their lives. 

The bandit was my final catch for the week. This morning I moved the camera to yet another spot in this same area, but set at a much lower angle. I look forward to checking in again next week to see what critters have passed through.

* * *

Mountain Home Loop

* * *

After grabbing the memory card from the camera trap farther up the mountain, we drove back down to hike a loop I've been wanting to do for a while.

Starting at the parking lot across the street from Mountain Home Inn, the loop would take us down Alice Eastwood Road (we were passed twice by motor vehicles heading to and from the campground) to Muir Woods, up the Bootjack Trail to Van Wyck Meadow, then back via the Troop 80 Trail. In this shot of Pam with the giant redwood tree, we're at a spur trail that links the Camp Eastwood Trail to the Bootjack without descending into Muir Woods at all.

We didn't use the spur. We wanted to see Muir Woods. It was only around 9 a.m., so it wasn't yet crowded down there. 

It was pretty down in Muir Woods, thanks in part to all the green of the new elk clover (Aralia californica) leafing out. The creek was still running and birds were singing, so the soundscape was nice too.

I was a little surprised to run into traffic way back beyond the Muir Woods boundary. This chatty group started hiking again as soon as we reached them. Unfortunately, we couldn't overtake them, so for some peace and quiet we stopped to rest and let them get well ahead of us, only to catch up to them and repeat the dance a couple more times before parting ways at Van Wyck Meadow.

I had never hiked the Bootjack Trail up out of Muir Woods before. It's gorgeous. Here, the newly minted canyon maple leaves (Acer macrophyllum) were the stars of the show.

We'll have to remember to bring a snack next time. This huge boulder next to the creek would have made an excellent picnic spot.

I figure this is the bridge whose reconstruction kept the trail closed for so long (after those trees in the ravine below smashed the last one). It's the most substantial bridge I've ever seen on the mountain, complete with steel girders.

The day started out cool, especially higher on the mountain where the north-facing exposure was quite windy. There was hardly any wind at all on the south side of the mountain, though, and none once we were down in the woods. The day became quite warm, and the trail was steep, so it was nice to find this accessible pool for a cool splash.

Parts of the trail were steep enough to require steps, and some of the steps had been made with old trail signs.

Here's a newer trail sign at Van Wyck Meadow ("Pop. 3 Steller's Jays"). According to my old (out of print) Olmsted & Bros. map, Van Wyck Meadow was a "[p]opular picnicking area in the 20's and 30's. Formerly called Lower Rattlesnake Camp. Named for Sidney M. Van Wyck, Jr., president of the [Tamalpais Conservation Club] in 1920-21. As a lawyer, he played an active role in agitating for a state park. The big rock in the middle of the meadow was called Council Rock."

There are many possible routes to continue hiking from the meadow. I'd thought about continuing uphill to pick up and return by the Matt Davis Trail, but I'd never hiked the Troop 80 Trail before and wanted to see it.

Unfortunately, as we soon found out, the trail was part of a race course! They came like this, one or two at a time. The trail is very narrow in most places, and sometimes the drop-off is deadly steep. You would not want to be accidentally bumped into a ravine, so we were glad to be able to let runners pass in wider sections of the trail.

Here, where the Sierra Trail meets the Troop 80, we finally parted company with the racers at an aid station. This junction is about 100 feet from the Panoramic Highway, but most of the Troop 80 Trail was not quite so close to the road. In any event, there was a lot more traffic on the trail than on the road!

We didn't rush the hike, but we didn't dawdle either, as I would have if I'd brought my "real" camera, so the 5-mile loop took us just about three hours. It's a nice hike through beautiful woods and along an interesting creek, but it can be a bit "civilized," especially with summer festivities coming on. Speaking of which, the Mountain Play began its new season today.

* * *