Hodgepodge

 

I haven't been out shooting during the last week, instead working on a long-term project on Pt. Reyes that will be similar to the Mt. Tam book you can see on the sidebar. I figured I could get started creating some basic pages by picking out single images that are worth a page of their own. I mocked up the page above for now, but I'd like to replace the two starfish with nudibranchs eventually, assuming I can snag a couple of new species. 

I biked up to Mt. Tam today to check on the trail cam, only to see that the pool continues to attract very few visitors compared with other years. I think the pool is a bit more shallow this time, and the "beach" is a bit more steep, so it might not be as attractive to wildlife. But even band-tailed pigeons, which were so prevalent in the past, have been no-shows. The coolest animal to show up was a bat, but the trail cam images and video are not worth posting. A fox ambled past the cam and put his mark on it. I did not notice any peculiar smell when I checked up on it this afternoon. On another scatological note, I almost put my hand in a pile of raccoon poop shortly after whacking it on a stick and drawing just enough blood to attract the attention of very persistent little flies. The goldfinches that last week were all around the Rock Spring water tank were gone. The soundscape had returned to the realm of acorn woodpeckers.

It seemed like it was going to be a day of micro-climates, so I brought along a wind gauge and thermometer to put some numbers on my observations. It was 65 degrees in my living room just before I left at 9:15 a.m., and 63 degrees outside, with a mild 2-3 mph breeze. The fog was wet enough to dust my eyeglasses, and to make a pitter-patter sound on my nylon windbreaker as I rolled down the hill toward the Golden Gate Park entrance at 9th and Irving. Half way across the Golden Gate Bridge it was about 59 degrees with 6-10 mph wind. I'd have guessed the wind was stronger than that, so it was nice to get a measurement. I didn't get above the fog until just below Bootjack, and once I was in the sun the temperature quickly rose to 69, then up to 82 by the time I reached Rock Spring, and finally to a high of 96 in the sun. The wind had come up to 10-12 mph by the time I headed home, with gusts to 17 mph. Again, when I hit those gusts head-on, I'd have guessed they were stronger than that.

And just to earn my hodgepodge license, I'm including a couple of off-beat pix of doctoring a cheese pizza with vegetarian toppings, and a recent discovery of a mochi donut shop on Irving Street near Nomad Cyclery where I was having my ebike tuned up, with a new rear brake rotor, brake pads, chain and cassette, and new fat tires (old = 700x30; new = 700x50) which I thought I'd try out for comfort's sake. 

Riding home I passed the float planes near the freeway offramp and remembered when my wife got us a ride in one of them for my 40th birthday -- 24 years ago! Holy cow. I also photographed a clutch of greater yellowlegs from the bike path between Sausalito and the float planes. They were the first I'd seen along there. I'm still waiting for the return of the black-necked stilts that I often saw before I got the FZ-80.

Squirrel Comes In For A Drink

Steller's Jay Comes In For A Bath

Crime Scene On The Log Above The Water Hole

Get Those Numbers

Zucchini, Spinach, Sun-Dried Tomato, Onion, Garlic,
Bell Pepper, and Field Roast Veggie Burger

Cybelle's Cheese Pizza, Doctored

The Mochi Donut Shop

A Mochi Donut (delicious but $3.80!)

Can You Spot The Trail Cam?

Fox Marks His Territory

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Wild Wednesday

 

Wild Skies on Wednesday

Scenes of crazy skies filled with clouds spilling sheets of rain were nice, as were the few occasional drops that landed on me, but best of all was hearing the boom of thunder as I stepped into the woods to check my trail camera. Not the kind of weather I would normally expect on a mid-August day, which made it a good day to bike up to Mt. Tam. I was prepared to deal with rain, but each time the skies darkened nearby I hoped I would be able to avoid getting soaked. My luck held, and I never felt more than a few drops.

There was a dense river of fog snaking through the Golden Gate, with storm clouds moving across the sky above it. It was such an unusual scene that I stopped at the visitor look-out on the north side to take it in and snap a photo with the FZ80. The rest of the ride was par for the course, although I stopped along Panoramic Highway to photograph a pair of panther amanitas growing beneath a pine in someone's front yard. I hadn't expected to see mushrooms in August either, but that spot probably gets a lot of fog drip. (Just this morning I found a puffball in my garden at home.)

There were quite a few California quail in the area around Rock Spring, and I was glad to see they'd also appeared on my trail camera (video below). I accidentally spooked them and raised a cacophony of excited quail chirping. Once that died down I noticed a constant high-pitched chirping of countless small birds too high in the trees to see. But on the way to the trail camera I saw them flying down to the Rock Spring water tank to drink from a small leak. After checking on the trail cam I returned to the tank to await their return. It was hot and muggy, and little flies harassed me as I tried to remain as still as possible. Finally, the birds returned to drink despite my presence. They were goldfinches, and there must have been dozens of them.

The Golden Gate Bridge Emerges From The Fog

Panther Amanita Mushrooms Along Panoramic Highway

Quail on the Lookout, With Ripening Acorns

Quail Flushed Into Cover

Goldfinches Drinking At Rock Spring Tank

Goldfinches & Honeybees

A Young Coyote With Big Ears Visits The Trail Camera

Mt. Tam Cam, August 2022

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Palomarin Beach '22

Nanaimo Dorid (Acanthodoris nanaimoensis)

It's been four years since I last visited Palomarin Beach -- six since I last posted pix on the blog (I made no posts in 2018). The parking area seemed slightly different than I remembered it, and it took a second to find the trailhead. A "You Are Here" map listed only three hikes from there -- to Bass Lake, Wildcat Beach, and Alamere Falls. The map showed no trail going down to the beach. 

I drove back about a quarter-mile to a smaller parking area and found a steep, narrow trail that I suspect is maintained only by locals and other visitors, and certainly not by the National Park Service. As I descended I saw some tracks in the dirt and figured I must be in the right place, and about one second later I realized the tracks had been made by a coyote. As the trail deteriorated, I knew I'd gotten myself into a real-life coyote story. 

I kept going down despite the sketchy trail. The last fifty feet or so was completely gone, with the trail replaced by a narrow chute of rubble. To get down to the beach required lowering myself down the scree, not quite rappelling, via climbing rope and a rope ladder that had been left for the purpose. 

Google Maps still shows the Coast Trail going down to the beach, but folks on alltrails.com started saying the trail was closed as far back as November 2020.

Anyway, I made it down to the beach without incident. No surprise, I was the only person on the beach and had the whole reef to myself. Just as I was leaving, a guy with a surfboard and a woman with a camera tripod appeared out of nowhere. I think they must have walked up from Bolinas, and they continued north a ways before the guy paddled out into fairly poor surf, although he did have the break all to himself.

The reef did not disappoint. In addition to the usual suspects, I found a new-to-me species of sea anemone that I can't identify, and a couple of critters that I have no idea what they are. It was interesting to visit tidepools south of the Golden Gate one day and north of it the next.

Lined Shore Crab Skeleton

Lined Shore Crab Ready to Rumble

Kelp Crab

Red Crab

Hermit Crab

The First Bat Star I've Seen In A While

Cute Little Feller

Ochre Sea Star Strikes a Pose at Mussel Beach

Aggregating Anemones Doing Their Thing

Tidepool Garden

Preparing to See What the New Tide Will Bring

Anemone Indigestion

A Sea Anemone Species I've Never Seen Before

Surf Grass & Friends #1

Surf Grass & Friends #2

Red Feather Sea Weed
(Erythrophyllum delesserioides)

Neighborhood of Sea Sacs

Bladderwrack (Green) and Turkish Washcloth (Reddish Brown)

Fashion Slug

Leopard Dorid

Also Known As San Diego Dorid (Diaulula sandiegensis)

Orange-Peel Dorid (Acanthodoris lutea)

Mystery Meat (Seriously, What Is This Thing?!)

Close Crop of Whatever That Is At The Top

Little Red Mystery Tube-Nuggets

Going Back Up Was As Interesting As Coming Down

Definitely Not A Park Service Trail

* * *

Oranges

Spotted Dorid Nudibranch
(click images to view larger)

Stepping out onto the reef at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve early this morning I quickly spotted a tiny bright orange critter that I assumed was another of the tiny sea cucumbers I photographed at the bottom of this recent post. It was only when I viewed the magnified image in Photoshop that I was able to get a better look at the tentacles coming out of its head. But wait, what is that among the tentacles? Isn't that a rhinophore? D'oh!

Apparently this was a juvenile spotted dorid, Triopha maculata, and at no time on that reef did I ever realize it was a nudibranch. Yes, there is more than one kind of tiny orange slug-like critter with weird appendages.

For a couple of days before heading out to Fitzgerald I whet my appetite with a perusal of the hefty Intertidal Invertebrates of California by Morris, Abbott, and Haderlie, published in 1980. Morris was the sole photographer for the color plates in the back of the book, and he has a nice shot of a 40mm-long Triopha maculata (much larger than the ones in this post) from Pacific Grove. Morris shot all the pictures using Kodacolor film in a second-hand Exakta 35mm camera with 50mm and 100mm lenses fitted with bellows, extension tubes, and/or close-up lenses. He used trays, flood lights, and fresh bottled sea water to make many of the images, sometimes from the confines of a motel room. I can imagine the struggle of trying to do it all himself, and I appreciated his quip that, "The equipment seemed to function more effectively when it was supplemented by ample amounts of sweating and cursing."

It seems like it's getting increasingly difficult to find non-commercial search results with Google, and I couldn't figure out if Morris is still around. But if he is, I'll bet he'd appreciate how easy it is nowadays to photograph tidepools. I saw people getting amazingly good results with their smartphones, as well as compact cameras that can go underwater. Anyway, I thank Morris for his efforts and for showing me the incredible variety of intertidal animals it's possible to see in California, including some that look more like slime molds than anything we'd normally associate with the word "animal."

Spotted Dorid Preparing To Be Left High & Dry

Spotted Dorid Showing Its Foot

Another Orange Animal (A Sponge, I Believe)

A Turban Snail Encrusted With Coralline Algae

San Diego Dorid Nudibranch

Close Crop of One of Its Rhinophores

The Setting Moon With Remnants of Fog

A Tube Worm in Its Case

A Not-Very-Yellow Sea Lemon Nudibranch

A Beautiful Lined Chiton

A Smaller Lined Chiton In A Delicious Bowl of Coralline Algae

A Six-Rayed Sea Star
(About the Size of a Quarter)

An Even Smaller Sea Star On Iridescent Kelp

A Green-Tinged Limpet Surrounded By Barnacles

The Always Irresistible Sunburst Anemone

Reef Rug

An Even Tinier Six-Rayed Sea Star

A Keyhole Limpet on the Move

A Young Red Crab (Deceased)

Another of the Morning's Several Juvenile Spotted Dorids
Scoots Past a Periwinkle Shell

Camouflaged Sculpin

Sun Rays on the Bluffs

A Raven Snags A Morsel In The Wrack

First at the Tidepools,
Last at the Tidepools:
A Flock of Gulls

* * *