Hummer in the Hedge Nettle

A long time ago, probably in the '90s, I used a ripe blackberry to entice a wood rat from its nest so I could photograph it. At least, that's what my memory is. I can't find the image. I went to Redwood Creek (downstream of Muir Woods) to try again yesterday morning, parking in a pull-out beneath a beautiful California buckeye tree in late but still-full bloom. (Many years ago I collected a few of its buckeyes and tossed them into an empty lot near my home; one of the seeds germinated and is now a good-sized, flowering tree.) 

Although I didn't find any wood rat nests in the limited amount of time available before I had to head back to town, I enjoyed briefly communing with the nature of the riparian world.

Early in my explorations, a small flock of band-tailed pigeons descended from the sky to alight high in the branches of an alder tree. Hop by hop, they dropped lower and lower, until they finally reached the object of their desire--the bunched red fruits of coastal elderberry.

With hermit thrushes singing in the woods and salmon fingerlings darting in the shadows of the creek, a Steller's jay dropped onto a nearby alder branch just as I was staking out a mystery bird in some willows. I waited for the inevitable alarm to sound from the jay, but it paid me no mind. Instead it darted into a couple of nooks for possible insects, then posed very briefly before flying deeper into the woods. (The mystery bird remained mysterious.)

On the underside of the rickety bridge that crosses the creek was a small papery hornet's nest. It was about the size and shape of half a football, and it appeared to my naked eye to be inactive. Looking through my long lens, though, I spotted a single hornet standing guard at the entrance.

Bee Plant (Scrophularia californica), with Bee (Bombus sp.) 

& Coast Hedge Nettle (Stachys chamissonis)

I eventually got back in the car to check another area for wood rat nests and ended up spooking an Allen's hummingbird that was feeding on the nectar of purple coast hedge nettle flowers. I decided to stake out the patch for a while and as I waited for the hummer to return I watched bumblebees (and other bees) feeding on the nectar of tiny bee plant flowers.

Eventually a hummer returned, but now that I look more closely at the pictures I'm thinking this is a female Anna's hummingbird. I had definitely photographed an Allen's hummingbird as it rested on a branch after feeding briefly (see last photo below) and mistakenly assumed this was the same bird.

She moved very fast, and I was focusing manually in the low light, but I managed to fire off a few frames.

After she took off I mosied a little farther down the trail and spotted a bright yellow Wilson's warbler gleaning among a tangle of willow branches.

I fired off a few frames, and even though I did not manage to get a usable image of Wilson, I did get a laugh out of seeing that in my only sharp image, the bird's head was cut off behind some leaves. So it goes.

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The Vision Thing

I conceived my 2015 Pt. Reyes photography project just as I was wrapping up my Circumannuation of Mt. Tamalpais which is chronicled at the beginning of this blog. (To begin the circumannuation I deleted all the previous posts going back to 2007.) I did a separate blog with the Pt. Reyes project, deleting the whole thing when the year was done. 

Deleting the blog had been my vision from the beginning, though I wasn't sure I would be able to go through with it as the year progressed. I did go through with it, though, and am still glad even with five years of hindsight. I was inspired by Tibetan and Navajo sand mandalas, or sand paintings, whose intricate preparation is a means of bringing order and wholeness to bear on a point of discord or imbalance. When its work is done it's poured into a nearby river or returned to the earth.

The other day I was going through some old magazines that have been in the same small pile for years, thinking it might be time to toss them in the recycling bin. Instead I realized why I'd saved them in the first place, including a couple issues of Bay Nature magazine that touch on Pt. Reyes. One of them, from 2005, looks back on the Vision Fire that had burned ten years before. 

The image above, with the morning sun trying to burn through the fog, was made on Mt. Vision in 2015, twenty years after the fire. This part of the mountain didn't see the worst of the flames, which started south of this location and destroyed 43 homes before burning all the way down to Limantour Beach.

Right now Mt. Vision Road remains closed (it's been a long time!) due to the possibility of fire danger. This image looking northeast from Inverness Ridge over Tomales Bay and out toward Mount St. Helena was made near the 1995 fire's starting point. Apparently a couple of teens thought they'd put out their illegal campfire, not realizing embers remained deep in the forest duff where, a couple of days later, strong winds kindled those embers back into flame.

Mugwort and Fennel, Graffiti & Coastal Gumweed

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Return to Pt. Reyes

Five years ago I spent a lot of my spare time photographing Pt. Reyes, and I've been thinking about doing something like that again. After all, it's a magical place, as you can see from the above image. :)

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Light Show

I had a bit of luck when I arrived at the gate below Rock Spring at maybe 6:55 a.m. and found it partly open. Maybe it hadn't been been shut properly the night before, but there was no ranger around so I scooted through the half-open gate. If I'd arrived five minutes later I'd have missed the glory and brocken specter.

When I got out of the car I was so stoked I didn't even consider how ephemeral the display might be.

You probably need to get there well before the usual gate opening at 7 a.m. to have a more leisurely experience.

Less than three minutes elapsed between this shot and the previous one, and the fog retreated downhill from there, taking the glory with it. 

I wasn't in the mood to bike in the fog and wind to check on the trail cams, so I took the opportunity of driving to bring my camera gear and maybe photograph a few wildflowers.

I'd checked windy.com the day before to see if the air at 2,000 feet would be still enough to run a few focus stacks, and it looked like it might be okay. Unfortunately, the mountain turned out to be windier than I'd expected, and I was only able to fire off this one stack before it became impossible.

The Indian pink was bobbing like a prizefighter by the time I got there (it was near one of the trail cams), and it would have been difficult to get even a single-frame image of it under natural light, so I popped a flash at an angle to keep the background clutter to a minimum.

I've walked past this patch of coyote mint (Monardella villosa) several times lately, but this was the first time I had a camera other than my smartphone with me.

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Scene in the Avenues

We were out for a long walk in the avenues when we had to detour into the street to get around a work crew lowering elk heads from a second-story window off Lawton Street and loading them into a truck. I'm sorry to say I have no answers to this unusual riddle.

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Mountain Roads

Descent through Redwoods, Panoramic Highway.

Hairpin Turns.

Magic Forest.

Thar Be Hobbits About.

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Orange Leopards

I'd noticed some Leopard Lilies in bloom while biking up to Mt. Tam along Panoramic Highway a week or so ago, so when I drove up to Rock Spring the other day I visited a spot nearby where I figured I could find more.

It was still early in the morning and the sun had yet to shine in the ephemeral creek drainage where they grow among rushes and hedge nettle, California hemp and giant chain ferns, and also stinging nettle. Just as I was setting up on this blossom, a ray of sunshine beamed right onto it. Later in the day, when the sun pours in, the flowers will attract butterflies and hummingbirds.

Despite the fact that I was wearing short pants, I managed to get in and out without brushing up against any of this stuff. I don't mind terribly if I do get zapped by stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), and I even take a kind of perverse pleasure in continuing to feel the sizzle on my skin when I'm back at home in the city downloading and processing the pictures I took back on the mountain.

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Giddy Up

The other day my wife and I were looking for a nice place up on Bolinas Ridge to lounge around, eat some cheese and crackers, and drink some fancy birthday wine. We pulled over at a spot we've enjoyed before, but it looked like there was a swarm of bees waiting to greet us. We wondered if there was a hive nearby. 

This was an unusual experience for me on Mt. Tam, and I didn't want to drive away without at least checking it out, so I got out of the car as quick as I could, and then I just stood still among the buzzing chaos, hoping I wouldn't get stung. It didn't take long to realize that the insects weren't bees at all, but horseflies, which are arguably worse! 

I swatted a couple of them off me and jumped back in the car, but one of them got inside and was going crazy. I started the engine and rolled a window down so it could escape, and felt lucky that no more took the opportunity to charge inside and bite us. 

Horseflies, also known as gadflies, are in the genus Tabanus. The name was first recorded by Pliny the Younger (the Roman guy born in 62 A.D., not the triple IPA from Russian River Brewing), and it stuck. Horseflies have been found in the fossil record back to the Jurassic, and I wouldn't be surprised if dinosaurs owe their reputations for ferocity to the fact that they didn't have arms to swat the hordes of biting gadflies off their skin. As with mosquitoes, it's the females that do the biting to procure the nutritious mammal blood they need to reproduce.

We did finally find another lounge area along the ridge with just a few buzzing horseflies that let us pass without incident. As we were enjoying our repast, another car pulled in next to ours, and whoever got out screamed about the "bees" and got back in her car to drive to a better spot. We chuckled a little, since she headed off in the direction where they are even more numerous.

For some reason they liked to perch on the side of my car, so when I returned a couple of days later with my Nikon I simply parked and waited for them to land so I could grab a picture.

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A Dandy Lion

I decided to take the car up to Mt. Tam so I could carry my Nikon gear along and maybe photograph some more god beams in the fog, but even at around 7:15 a.m. the fog had already settled at a lower elevation. Glories would have to wait for another day. My wildlife cameras have only been in place for less than a week, so I didn't swap cards or batteries, or even go anywhere near them. I decided to just poke around the Rock Spring area where I was soon attracted by these big Mountain Dandelions (Agoseris grandiflorus). My eyes take a voyage in the details and become mesmerized by the concentric flower rays. The etymology of the scientific name means "chief chicory," or maybe "goat chicory" (see Jepson Herbarium). 

What surprised me was how beautiful this flower was, even from underneath. I wonder if that display is attractive to insects, or if it's just the kind of gratuitous beauty in nature that makes a human being smile.

I've photographed the seed heads before and didn't want to repeat myself, but when I saw these two snow globes intertwined with each other, plus a stalk of still-green dogtail grass thrown into the bargain, I decided to see what I could do. A male California quail stood silent sentry on a nearby rock, and I wondered if he was watching over any chicks feeding in the meadow. I felt bad that I had left my long lens at home since I don't often get the chance to photograph quail on Mt. Tam.

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Blue Sky Bristlecones

One year we went up to the Bristlecone Pine Forest around my wife's birthday, it being a favorite place of hers. One thing that stands out in these June images compared with July and August is the total lack of clouds.

Strangely enough, the dead bristlecones are often the most photogenic. Here, a once-living tree has turned into a sculptured wind-dancer. 

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