Spiders of September

 

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As I was sitting out back just now I noticed this orb-weaver spider in her web spanning part of the width of a basement door that rarely gets opened. I went upstairs to get my camera and brought along a water mister to spray on her web, but the mist didn't really stick. Maybe the strands of the web are just too thin to hold decent sized droplets.

I also remembered to look up the reason why it seems like I see more spider webs in the garden in the late summer and early fall, and the answer was that the females that hatched in spring have finally gotten big enough to notice. The smaller males are roaming the earth in search of females, who will lay their eggs before winter sets in.

And since I already had my camera out, I decided to clean the sensor since I've been putting it off for some time. I put it off because no one has invented a tiny vacuum cleaner or some other easy and effective method of doing the job. It always takes several iterations of snapping a picture of the sky with my 50mm lens stopped down to f/16, then importing the image into Lightroom so I can see where the spots are. Sometimes I'll do the cleaning, only to check the sensor and find it even more spotty than before I cleaned it, which never makes me happy. What does make me happy is when I somehow finally get the thing in good shape.

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The Nature of Nature

 

Sometimes you go to Drake's Beach at Pt. Reyes and it's just you and a couple of gulls, with maybe a semipalmated plover or two on the reef and a wandering whimbrel probing for sand crabs. I was amazed on this gray September morning a couple of years ago to find the shoreline teeming with young Heermann's gulls and brown pelicans. 

Unfortunately, the whole Seashore is closed due to the Woodward Fire. I'd take a gray day on Drake's Beach over another day of self-imposed house arrest due to Covid-19 and wildfire smoke any day.

One of the things that gets me through the urban exile is a good book, like the one I just finished called The Nature of Nature, by Enric Sala. The writing is engaging and hopeful, and even includes some photography, as you might expect from a book published by National Geographic.

I didn't start underlining passages until nearly midway into the book, when I could no longer help myself: "A recent study suggests that a global shift to regenerative agriculture--practices designed to produce and restore the life of the soil--would have the ability to sequester most of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

After that I was underlining sections about how trees share carbon through underground mycelial networks: "During the summer months..., adult birch trees in the sun help fir trees in the shade. But in the fall, when the birch loses its leaves but the fir still has green needles, it is the fir that sends nutrients to the birch."

The book is full of these kinds of tidbits, but they are just parts of the intricate ecology of the story Sala tells, such as how an increase in whaling leads to the depletion of sea otters, or how PCBs that were banned 40 years ago continue to wreak havoc on killer whales which are now "among the most contaminated animals on our planet...."

The main thing I got out of this book is how global heating (Sala calls "climate change" a euphemism) and other impending ecological calamities are not inevitable, even at this late date. As the book jacket says, "In this impassioned and inspiring book, world-renowned marine ecologist Enric Sala illuminates the many reasons why preserving Earth's biodiversity makes logical, emotional, and economic sense."

Unfortunately, those are not the kinds of things that move your average chucklehead influencing public policy. While they're busy fretting about class war, race war, and civil war, a real monster is coming to eat their grandchildren. Someone needs to write a book about how to shift the trajectory of selfish, short-term greed and mean-spirited contrariness toward intelligent action to make a better world. 

As Sala shows, that better world is still within humanity's grasp. It's something to think about as we experience a record heat wave this weekend and choke on a record string of Spare the Air Days. How sad would it be if 20 or 30 years from now, we're thinking about this as being the good old days.

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Cypress & Fog

 

The fog was just fog when I went for a walk this morning, but a shift in the wind has brought a pall of smoke south from the Woodward Fire. You can watch the Purple Air sensor icons changing color in real time.

These are more shots from back in 2011, with fog and morning sun creating an ethereal atmosphere among the cypress trees at the foot of the Tomales Point Trail next to Pierce Point Ranch.

I'll have to remember the next time I go out there to see if this young plant has continued to grow on the downed nurse log.

In the early morning I had the place all to myself, just me and the birds and unseen elk bugling from deep in the fog.

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Good Morning, Pt. Reyes

 

Sunrise Over Tomales Bay

Despite all the negative aspects of the fire, it's going to be interesting to explore Pt. Reyes as the land rejuvenates itself over the next few years.

Sedges & Rushes Near Kehoe Beach

Hopefully it won't be too much longer before the fire is out and it's safe to go out there and have a look. Unfortunately, the safe part might be a while. I know the Forest Service closes burn areas due to the potential danger of falling trees.

Bucks Will Be Bucks

These three photos were taken on September 2.

Of 2011.

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Favorite Visitor

 

I love seeing all the critters--owls, red-shafted flickers, band-tailed pigeons, deer, raccoons, and gray fox. But what always makes my day is when the cams catch a bobcat.

This wiry little guy showed up several times over the last few weeks, all but once during the daylight hours.

These two shots were taken a week apart. The earlier shot is on the bottom. In the top image you can see how the pool of water got smaller despite the storm that passed through and set off the big lightning fires. We got so much rain at my place in San Francisco that I was actually a tiny bit worried the camera in this spot was going to get swamped. When I saw yesterday that the pool had shrunk, I moved the cam to a new spot where the view will continue to include the water.

I strung together three 15-second clips below, two of which show different angles on a pair of foxes playing on a log. The third is the bobcat making a night visit and apparently being put off by the glowing red lights on the trail cam.

Watch on YouTube

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Up In Smoke

 

The upper part of Mt. Tam was closed for a while due to excessive smoke from the Woodward Fire in Pt. Reyes, but it opened up again this week. Which isn't to say the skies are clear, since it's still quite smoky up there. It's not so bad that you don't want to go for an easy hike, but I wouldn't recommend pushing much beyond easy. 

I mainly wanted to check my trail cams, but I was glad I brought my Nikon along to do a little photography. I didn't expect to shoot anything after the morning fog, but I was lucky to see some wildlife, including a covey of California quail.

Of course the quail on Mt. Tam aren't so accustomed to the presence of human beings that they just ignore you. As I approached a group near Rock Spring they all fluttered up into the bay and oak trees, alarm chirps sounding in the branches. I spotted this look-out and managed to fire off a couple of frames including this last one before he, too, took wing.

I drove out West Ridgecrest to see what the view north toward Point Reyes might look like and got sidetracked when I saw a jackrabbit by the side of the road. I pulled over and got my camera out, and as I was walking back toward the hare, I saw it bound across the street. I figured it was gone for good but kept walking and soon saw its telltale ears. It seemed to be staring pensively back across the road it had just crossed, probably wondering, "Why did I just cross the road?"

I couldn't help trying to get a little closer, and doing so broke his reverie. But it was hot out there, as well as smoky, and he didn't want to overdo the escape routine.

Eventually, though, he ditched me for good.

Back where I'd parked my car I heard dry leaves being crushed in the woods. There was a doe and young buck on one side of the road...

...and another doe and buck, with larger antlers, on the other side. The deer were so intent on feeding that they tolerated my presence without batting an eyelash. In fact, this buck didn't even bother to raise his head and stare at me. He just kept his down and munched.

When I finally did get farther out on Bolinas Ridge I of course saw that Point Reyes was invisible beneath a layer of fog and smoke. On the hill overlooking Stinson Beach (also invisible), I followed a blister beetle making a bee-line across the parched dirt and tried out my phone camera's macro lens on it. I stepped away after getting a picture, not wanting to be a nuisance. But the beetle kept on truckin' nevertheless, only to eventually disappear down a small hole. I was kind of amazed that the little beetle had known exactly where it was going the whole time. 

I also watched a group of wild turkeys pass single-file along the edge of the nearby forest, and as usual was a little surprised that they can get away with being out in the open in a group like that with coyotes and bobcats about.

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New "48 Megapixel" Smartphone

 

Stow Lake

I decided to get a new phone since my Moto G5 has been acting up the last few months, requiring me to restart it every now and then to get the camera  working. Its fussiness put me under the mistaken impression that it was quite a bit older than it actually is. I only just now checked my files to realize that the earliest images were from July 2018.

Anyway, I replaced the G5 with another $300 phone, the Moto G Stylus, which is advertised as having 48 megapixels, but which actually delivers a 12-megapixel image. In fact, the Stylus images are just a tad smaller than the G5 images (12 vs 12.2 megapixels). The Stylus does a slightly better job of processing those megapixels into an image, but it's not much to blog about. 

I took a picture with both cameras at Stow Lake, and pixel-peeping shows basically no difference in the image resolution.

Moto G5 Crop

Moto G Stylus Crop

If it isn't false advertising for Motorola to claim the Stylus has 48 megapixels, it probably ought to be. What the company actually delivers is 48 "quad pixels." 

I find this disappointing, but life goes on. It takes nice pictures for a $270 smartphone, and it also has a 2-megapixel "macro" lens, which is more like a wide angle lens that lets you get really close to your subject, which I do appreciate since the G5 was useless for close-ups.

Close-up with Moto G Stylus

The other thing the new smartphone has, as its name implies, is a stylus. I didn't really care about this feature, but I somehow got the false impression that the Stylus made 48-megapixel images! (I also don't understand why several reviews of the Stylus state, incorrectly, that it has a 16MP camera.)

Stylus Action

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Interspecies Envoy

 

I placed the full bird bath saucer on the ground to see what I might catch (and also because I was afraid raccoons would pull it down), but other than the neighborhood cat (who did not drink), the only visitors have been a couple of late-night raccoons. The camera trap has caught birds bathing in little plant-pot saucers in the past, but I have yet to catch a bird ever using the bird bath, which has been in our yard since 2002! It has sentimental value to my wife, however, so we've kept it around. And like I say, the raccoons seem to like it. Unfortunately I have to empty it periodically to clear out the mosquito larvae. 

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Night & Day

 

Looking East at Sunset Last Night

A Few Minutes Before Sunrise This Morning

The warm and humid atmosphere this morning reminded me of Hawaii. As I walked past Golden Gate Heights Park I heard a weird crinkling noise in the trees. I couldn't place it, but it kind of reminded me of fog-drip. There wasn't a lick of fog though. It was raindrops. The rain didn't amount to anything, but the novelty was a treat. When my wife felt the first couple of drops she thought a bird had pooped on her, so she was glad it was rain too.

The new Blogger layout is bugging me. None of the typefaces look right.

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Lifting Fog, Lifting Spirits

This morning was the first in what seemed like a long time that we weren't socked in by dismal fog spiced with chilly winds. My spirits lifted as soon as I walked out the door. In fact, I even went back upstairs to get my phone so I could take a picture. As I walked through the neighborhood it seemed like I hadn't felt the uplift of such a beautiful morning since spring, although that can't be right. 

Back on Aug. 3, I had decided to renew my "picture a day" exercise, but the view held nothing but a wall of fog the next day, and the next, and the next, and so on. Several mornings I couldn't even see the first row of houses at the bottom of the hill, so I gave up on the picture-a-day and even stopped bringing my phone. 

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