Manzanita Munchers

Besides the several hundred empty frames fired off by insects or flitting birds at this trap over the last couple of weeks, the only thing I noticed that hadn't shown up in the last batch was the deer browsing manzanita. Maybe new leaves are coming out that are just tender enough to be palatable. The manzanita have also come into bloom, which might explain the sudden and major increase of empty frames set off by flying insects, of which only the butterflies were big enough to notice.

Young buck about to nosh on manzanita.

Bewick's Wren

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Cloudscapes

Enjoying the cloud views from our apartment yesterday. A few people out on Twin Peaks, and a lone jet taking people where they need to go.

A little later....

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Elk & Wildflowers

March has long been one of my favorite months, especially at Pt. Reyes, as wildflowers spring their colors on newly greened hillsides and animals feast in a land restored to plenty. 

Even though I hunker down against the ravages of a single-celled organism that's creating havoc around the world, the possibility of real danger still feels remote.

Yet I know that, along with the greening and colors and renewal of March, it is also the month when ticks stretch their legs from leaf tips to await a passing animal, humans included.

The yin and the yang, the constantly grappling forces of nature, are the intricate mechanisms of the grand adventure of being alive in the world.

So I stretch my bones with a downward dog...

...and savor the awesome beauty of it all.

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Poppies

Sierra Poppies

Diablo Poppies

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Two Bouquets

Seaside Daisies, Tennessee Valley

Dune Wallflowers, Pt. Reyes

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Three Trees

According to the forecast, the rain was going to be relatively mild on Mt. Tam this morning, and since the wind is supposed to come up tomorrow I figured I should head up to swap batteries and SD cards on my trail cameras. 

It was good to find that I could walk silently on the forest floor again, now that everything's wet and spongy, and the moss jackets on the trees were looking bold and sassy.

The woods were kind of spooky along the game trails. Back in the day I could have been stalked by mountain lions or even grizzly bears out here, and maybe some of that memory remains encoded in our neural net to give us a little thrill of fear. I figure it's never a bad idea to just be still and listen, though, and to move deliberately and with unconstrained awareness.

Now, instead of megafauna, we're being stalked by microbes -- and by "we" I mean the whole civilized world. Luckily we still have places like Mt. Tam where it's easy to manage one's social distancing. I encountered only four people on the trail, which was actually a little surprising since I was on human trails for only a short part of the route. 

I carried my big golf umbrella with me -- my portable cave -- and after I'd finished with the trail cams I found a nice place to sit (in my rain pants) and sip hot coffee while listening to the forest music of wind and falling rain.

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Green Reef

Reef, Drake's Bay

Reef Pool, Pt. Reyes

Semipalmated Plover, Pt. Reyes

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March Marsh

Sunrise, Giacomini Wetlands




Pt. Reyes Panorama

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Elk & Owl

Elk with Setting Moon, Pt. Reyes

Trail Monitor, Tennessee Valley

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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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Winter Coat

I enjoy putting a dish of kibble out for this neighborhood cat when I find her waiting at the back door, which of course mainly happens on workdays (since most days are workdays). I'll put the dish out, then go back upstairs to finish getting ready for work, and by the time I come back down to roll my bike out, the bowl is usually empty. If it isn't, I put the remaining kibble in a plastic bag and bring in the bowl. Sometimes several days go by where I don't see the cat at all, but a trail cam tells me that she does come by often, just not at the right time to catch me looking for her.

I used to put a small pile of kibble on the ground for her and leave it there. If The Fuzzy One left any uneaten, it would go to other neighborhood cats, and also squirrels, jays, and crows. By the time the raccoons and rats showed up after sundown, there would be nothing left but the scent of kibble past. My neighbor, whose lily pilly tree shows up in the background of the photo above, felt that it was a bad idea to attract the corvids because they would prey on the nests of birds that might be in the lilly pilly or his other tree, a native live oak.

So I've been more diligent about leaving food unattended, but if I'm around the house on the weekends I'll put a bowl out for The Fuzzy One and even leave the back door open so she can come in and nap in civilized comfort in the basement area and go back out when it suits her, and she likes to hang out with us when we're doing laundry or puttering in the garden. 

I'll put a camera trap on her food dish every now and then to see if crows or ravens are coming down to snack on leftover kibble, or if any other non-cat critters are showing up in the daytime. So far, so good. 

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Snowed In

My first time cross-country skiing and snow-camping, 1993 at Lassen Volcanic National Park. I was with a group of folks from what was then called Outdoors Unlimited at UCSF. We'd spent the night of our arrival sleeping on a sheet of ice in the parking lot before skiing into the backcountry at daylight. Good times.

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