Sunday Ramble

Sunday Morning Fog

Some days go so perfectly you feel in tune with the universe. Other days you figure it must be time for a tune-up.

I always get a tune-up when I visit Mt. Tam, even when some things go perfectly south, like yesterday when I locked my ebike to a tree and realized I didn’t have the key to unlock my battery so I could swap in the fresh one. With less than two bars left on the first battery, there was no way I was going to make it home. I’d probably go to zero on the hill out of Sausalito, or maybe in the cold, howling wind and fog part-way across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Luckily I had my phone, and once I was back in cellphone range I was able to call my wife to come get me. We still had some grocery shopping to do, so we met up at The Good Earth down in Tam Junction, which we’ve been curious to check out anyway, and where I was able to get some sprouted wheat bagels and tempeh, neither of which our local Andronico’s carries.

When I got home and downloaded the three trail cams’ memory cards, I knew perfection had been lost again when I saw that one of them had more than 4,000 images on it. This was from the third cam that I set up last week, and I figured I must have missed seeing some errant blade of grass that caused a lot of wind-triggers. I downloaded the images figuring it would still be worth it to weed out hundreds or thousands of “empty” frames in order to get the one classic bobcat shot.

But when I pulled the images into Lightroom I was struck by the fact that almost every frame looked the same, and that nothing in the images indicated what could have caused the false triggers. Also, every one of the 4,000-plus images was shot on the same day I set out the cam, and only covered a couple hours of that day before it shut down.

After mulling over this strange turn of events for some time, it finally dawned on me that I had set that camera to shoot a time lapse while we were camping at Sonora Pass recently.

This morning I drove back up to Mt. Tam, arriving just as the ranger opened the gate at 6:58 a.m., and the trail cam was indeed still set to shoot a frame every few seconds. Now I know, if you set time lapse on the trail cam, you have to unset it to make it stop. I swapped out the drained batteries, reformatted the memory card, set the correct shooting mode, and drove back home so I could get to the farmer’s market before the strawberries sold out.

By the way, I like the idea of using a trail cam to shoot a long time lapse. For one thing, it runs silently since there is no mirror-slap like there is on my Nikon D800E. The unfortunate thing is, the trail camera doesn’t compile all the images into a single time lapse video file like the Nikon does. I had to pull the thousands of images into Adobe Premiere Elements to create the time lapse, and despite following somewhat complicated directions I didn’t get the smooth-running playback that I’d hoped for. I was surprised a dedicated video program couldn’t make it easy to create a decent time lapse, especially since the Nikon does it in-camera.

Inquisitive Fox

Mom & Two Fawns Spot a Fox

Friday Fogbeams

Bolinas Ridge Trail

'41 Pontiac

Sausalito Pit Stop

Looking for Brocken Specter

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Fog Break

I was about to settle down to some reading last night when I made a shocking discovery: when I looked out the back window, I could see! 

For the first time in weeks, the gray wall of fog was gone. I got the crazy notion that I should go over to Grandview Park and see if Comet Neowise was going to be visible. 

Even though it's not that far away, I drove my car and sat awhile to watch a gloriously bright orange sun sink below the horizon. I watched in vain for the green flash. Once the sun was below the horizon, park visitors began to exit. By the time I decided to head up the stairs there were only three other people up there enduring a strong, steady and cold wind.

I craned my neck to look for stars emerging from the night sky, but a nearly full moon was rising and keeping the stars from showing off. I passed the time by shooting a couple of panoramas, one of Mt. Tamalpais and the other looking over the Inner Sunset toward downtown.

A little after 9 p.m. it was actually getting dark, but still there were precious few stars, and no sign of the Big Dipper, which would give me a clue as to where the comet could be found. I'd hoped to have a shot of the comet over Mt. Tam, but no such luck. If the comet's still around in another couple of weeks during the new moon--and we get another fog break--I might try again.

I made the images above 1200 pixels wide, and you can click on an image to see it full-sized (although for some reason it doesn't work with the Mt. Tam pic, maybe something to do with Blogger's redesign).

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Tam Cam July

In my post earlier in the month I said I thought this trail cam location had potential, and I sorta cursed when I later got this image of a bobcat apparently bolting through so quickly it's head was cut off before the cam could jump into action. I have the cam set to fire off three frames when it's triggered. This was frame number one, and it seemed impossible to me that the bobcat wouldn't have triggered the camera sooner. I didn't figure out how it could have happened, aside from an insanely slow camera trigger, until I returned to the scene yesterday, July 31.

I had two cams set up, with one on the log and the other on this pool. For part of the month I had both photo and video working on this pool, but I ended up with so many useless frames that I turned off the video. It's a lot more time-consuming to review video in Lightroom than to review still images, and video also eats up the trail cam batteries more quickly.

What kind of owl is this? Check out the video below to see what happens next.

Yesterday I brought a third trail camera along, even though I wasn't sure where I wanted to place it. Biking up toward Rock Spring I returned to the scene of my recent fox encounter to look for anything obvious about the location that would be of enough interest to foxes that I could expect to catch them again. Seeing nothing more than a faint animal trail on the very steep slope, I didn't think it was worth setting up a cam there. 

The log cam has been catching foxes fairly often anyway. The video shows a nice little interaction between two foxes who meet in apparent joy.

All the other usual suspects also showed up, including mice and band-tailed pigeons, which are briefly included in the video.

When I swapped out the memory cards and batteries yesterday, I also re-synchronized the timestamp on each of the cams. Unfortunately, each cam gains time at a different speed. This image of the fox heading downstream past the pool and toward the log was stamped at 9:51 p.m.

And this one of the fox crossing the log was stamped at 10:04 p.m. I doubt the fox actually dawdled at the pool for 13 minutes, but who knows. I wish the timestamps were more accurate.

 

All three bobcat captures (July 9, 23 & 26) occurred in daytime. I suspect the bobcat in this image leaped up to the log from the downstream (left) side. More of this cat appears in the video.

What I also found yesterday is a nearby upstream ledge which probably explains how the bobcat's head was already cut off in the first frame at the top of this post. Unlike the foxes, the bobcat doesn't traverse the log from end to end, but leaps onto it.

The foxes always seem to get on the log from one of the ends, but they sometimes exit by jumping off. This one appears to be checking out something of interest at the pool.

Here it is almost noon when the bobcat comes down for a drink. Unfortunately I had turned off the video on this cam, but the third shot in the series clearly shows the cat dipping its head to drink. 

Having found nowhere better to put the third cam, I decided to set it up to overlook the pool and the log. I set its video to run for six seconds instead of the twelve that runs on the log cam, and already I regret doing that. I'm thinking about going back up tomorrow to set all the videos for 20 seconds. 

Even though it will be a pain to go through them all, and I'll have to swap batteries more often, it's probably worth the trouble to get the one-in-a-hundred (or several hundred) captures that would make the enterprise more fun and interesting.

Mt. Tam was gorgeous yesterday, with warm sunshine (which we haven't experienced in my fog-bound Sunset District neighborhood in recent memory) and best of all, hardly any bugs. On my last trip to swap out memory cards and batteries, I rushed through the task, swatting at various gnats and flies that swarmed around my face and tried to bite my legs. This time I sat rapturously next to the creek with a breeze singing in the trees and numerous birds flying about, in no hurry to leave.

View on YouTube

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Barked at by a Fox

My wife and I encountered some excellent cathedral beams (aka fog beams) during a hike last Sunday, when the only camera I had with me was a smartphone. The beams were so good that I drove back up today with my Nikon and high hopes, only to get skunked. Even at 7 a.m. the fog was too low on the mountain.

I decided to drive down the mountain to try to find the sweet spot where sun, trees, and fog conspire to create cathedral beams, but I was soon waylaid when I spotted a fox next to the road. I was lucky to find a safe pull-out not too far past him, and as I looked in my rear view mirror I saw a second fox that quickly ducked back into the woods. Thankfully I didn't leave my long lens at home again today.

I never saw the second fox again, but the other one, presumably the male, seemed eager to keep himself between me and his mate. That's how I interpreted the behavior, but I suppose this could be a female protecting the other fox which was her kit.

Right off the bat I heard a strange low rumbling sound, and it took me a minute to realize the sound was coming from the fox. I had never been growled at by a fox before. It was an interesting sound, and not one that you'd want to hear outside your tent in the middle of the night if you didn't know it was just a fox. I was surprised when the fox moved toward me, continuing to growl and occasionally to bark as well. This shot was the closest I came to catching it mid-bark.

The fox got bored with me before I got bored with him, and he moved down the steep hillside. The camera traps have been catching so many foxes, it was fantastic to finally have an in-person encounter.

After saying good-bye to the fox I drove down toward Stinson Beach to try to find some fog beams but didn't really find anything to compare with the beams we basked in on Sunday.

This was from Sunday's hike along the Bolinas Ridge Trail.

From Stinson, I drove out around Bolinas Lagoon and up Bolinas-Fairfax Road where I stopped to photograph these ferns in the diffuse light. It was just near this spot that I first photographed a gray fox on Mt. Tamalpais in May 2008. 

I circled back along West Ridgecrest Road where I watched a coyote trot south near the grassland-forest transition zone before disappearing behind a roll in the hillside. 

It was warm and sunny up there, so I removed my hat and put it on the roof of my car, then pulled my longjohn top off over my head. I tossed the longjohn top into the car and drove off with the hat still on the roof. I'd been thinking about getting a new hat anyway....

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Cosmic

I'd thought this image was a dud until I went back to tweak the curves adjustment a little bit just now and realized the Milky Way had shown up okay. I lit the bristlecone with a flashlight--one quick swoop--with an amber gel held in front of it.

And then I decided to rework this one a little bit.

And a brightened version of Neowise (with something like a skipping-stone bouncing off the atmosphere?).

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Patriarchs

One of the awesome things about living in San Francisco is that you can get in the car after breakfast and be in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest before dinner. It's a long drive from the Inner Sunset to the Patriarch Grove, but the only drag is getting out of the Bay Area and crossing the Central Valley. Once you're east of Oakdale, it's a terrific drive.

We couldn't get a reservation to drive through Yosemite, so we went up over Sonora Pass. It was a Sunday, and the amount of traffic on the pass between Kennedy Meadows and I-395 was impressively heavy. I wondered how many of those drivers might have preferred to go over Tioga Pass. I hadn't been up that way in a long time and was glad to find the route newly paved and striped, which made driving a pleasure. The road was so smooth we even saw a guy skateboarding down from Sonora Pass.

The last time we visited the Patriarch Grove I was driving a Jeep Cherokee, and I wasn't sure my Mazda 3 would be able to handle the gravel road above the Schulman Grove, especially the last maybe quarter-mile, which I remembered being pretty rough. There's even a sign at the beginning of the route warning that it costs at least $1,000 if you need a tow truck to come get you.

I took it easy, never really going faster than 18 mph up the 12-mile section, and the last quarter mile was improved enough to be able to get through all right. A Volkswagen sedan had also made it, as well as a Ford Transit-type van and a full-on Mercedes Class C motor home.

Even a Fiat 500 made it, and I was surprised on the way out when I had to pull over to let it fly past us, eating up that gravel road like a champ. I did not care to push my luck to try to keep up. A lady up at the Patriarch Grove had told us she punctured her oil pan one time, and she added that they had a long wait before very expensive help arrived.

Although we'd spent a long day driving, we couldn't resist waiting for nightfall and the chance to see Comet Neowise.

We couldn't find the comet despite having binoculars, so I amused myself by trying some night photography. The guy with the Class C motor home was with several other experienced and well-equipped astrophotographers (including the Fiat 500 folks) who were smart and dedicated enough to stake out their Milky Way vantage points while it was still light out (some of their lighting shows up in the background above). 

I poked around in the new-moon darkness as best I could but did not manage to get a worthwhile Milky Way shot, even with my ISO pushed to 3200 and exposing for 20 seconds (with a 16mm lens @ f/4). Unlike me, this guy knows what he's doing! 

It was funny how we'd originally been looking for Comet Neowise with our binoculars, picking a star in the sky and looking for a tail. When the comet finally came into view after some clouds cleared up, it was a cinch to see with our naked eyes. I made this shot with a 105mm (ISO 3200, 10 sec. @ f/2.8) as the comet soared above the mountain ridge to the north.

Buckwheat & Bristlecones

Apparently climate change is enabling young bristlecone pines to move farther up the mountain, but the skeleton field already there hints that it has been tried before with limited success.

Silhouette & Mountain Ridges

Tiny White Flowers With Pink Anthers

I tried to look these up on CalPhotos and found a possible match, only to see that I had posted the match myself (Eremogone kingii). I don't recall if anyone verified the ID for me, but this is the closest match I can come up with.

Bristlecone Husk

Counting tree rings in dead bristlecone pines, scientists have a continuous record of growing seasons going back 11,500 years.

I ran a time lapse while I was sitting with this lovely V-shaped snag. This is the shot I made after I stopped running the time lapse so I could quickly pack up my bag before the rain was upon me.

Here's the time lapse (view at YouTube).

Although we didn't see any during the daytime this trip (probably too many people around), a trail camera picked up a white-tailed jackrabbit in this three-frame composite.

We left the bristlecones to spend a couple of nights camping near Sonora Pass.

Unfortunately, we drove home with all the firewood we'd left with due to fire restrictions in the Sierra. However, if we'd had a fire, this small badger would almost certainly not have ventured so close to our camp.

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Slime Mold in the Yard

I was looking out the window of the laundry room into the back yard to see if the neighborhood cat was around when I spotted something unusual--a slime mold! It appears to be growing out of a stump that has been there since before we moved here in 2002, but which has never before produced any kind of fungal fruiting much less a slime mold. There is more slime mold growing in some nearby leaves, so I'm not actually sure it began with the stump or maybe some leaves lying on top of the stump.

My neighbor, a retired landscape gardener at Golden Gate Park who's lived in his place since the 1960s, said he believes the stump was once a yew tree.

Virtually all of the leaves on the ground are from the neighbor's lilly pilly tree (native to Australia).

Crop 1

Crop 2

I'm almost sorry that we're heading out on a camping trip tomorrow since I won't get to watch the progress of this splendid myxomycete.

Is this Fuligo septica, a white fruiting of the commonly yellow "dog vomit" slime mold, or maybe Enteridium lycoperdon, the false puffball?

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