Pt. Reyes in April, Pt. 1

 

Elk in Velvet

Sea Rocket & Cattails, Abbotts Lagoon

Abbotts Lagoon

Sunrise With Iris Patch

Tracks #1

Tracks #2

Tree Swallow, Abbotts Lagoon

Pussy Ears at Abbotts Lagoon

Deer Among Wildflowers and Coastal Scrub

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April on Mt. Vision

 

Sunrise from Mt. Vision

Just a few shots from a dawn patrol to Pt. Reyes National Seashore where the moon was setting as I passed through Point Reyes Station on my way to catch sunrise at Mt. Vision (in early April 2015). 

The Old Western Saloon With Setting Moon

Point Reyes Station With Setting Moon

Iris Sunrise, Mt. Vision

Mt. Vision Dreamscape

Bishop Pines in Chaparral

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Merced River Canyon

 

Looking through file photos for good wildflower destinations to check out this spring, I found these shots of crazy swathes of California poppies I photographed in the Merced River Canyon in 2009. I doubt it's always like this, but I do wonder what it's like right now, either here or elsewhere, in the Sierra foothills.

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Mountain High

 

Above the Fray

There was a surprising amount of traffic as I biked up Mt. Tam yesterday. Maybe folks were on spring break or just looking for a mountain high. Or an ocean high. I think most of the cars continued down toward Stinson Beach.

I'd left home under a virtually cloudless sky at 9 a.m., but two big ice cream scoops of clouds had formed over both ends of Mt. Tam by the time I'd reached the northwest corner of the Presidio, and clouds were all over by the time I reached the mountain itself. The patch of calypso orchids was still going strong at Bootjack, but the sky lupines are still just leafing out. It might just be wishful thinking, but the critter action around my trail cams seems to be on a springtime upswing, and a bobcat was kind enough to pass by twice. 

The old Douglas fir whose sculpted top branches made it often mistaken for a Monterey pine has been considerably whittled down this year.

 

James Bond, looking for a mountain high, detours from his flight path to make this unusual pass parallel to the length of Mt. Tamalpais.

Band-Tailed Pigeon at the Top of a Doug Fir

I was surprised the pigeons didn't all fly away as I hiked past them.

Tam Cam Video Clips

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A Trio of Triptychs

 

Click to view larger.

On Monday I walked to the beach along Noriega Street and was struck by how different Ocean Beach looked since last Wednesday, so I snapped a photo. On my way back home I spotted some lovely California poppies at Noriega and Sunset, so I texted a photo to my wife. Up at 24th Avenue, as I was about to walk past the 76 service station, I noticed that someone had placed an apparently brand new syringe on a ledge of bark on this sidewalk tree, at about kid height. This is a couple of blocks from where an alleged drug house recently exploded. (I dropped the syringe in a trash can.) Anyway, I thought the juxtaposition of found objects would make a fun triptych of my Noriega Street walk.

Although I was glad to just hang out indoors all day yesterday and read a new library ebook (The Undertow, by Jeff Sharlet), I was determined to get out for a walk today, and I thought I'd try another triptych of my "other" walk, which goes down Noriega, then along Sunset and back via Irving and 16th Avenue. With the syringe triptych on my mind, I thought I would call it "Two Cities & a Gritty". But I ended up cheating a little by using only two shots from today's walk, plus a cat-shot I snapped on Sunday as my wife and I were walking to the 9th & Irving area to get some Easy Breezy frozen yogurt.

The coast looked clear when I checked the weather radar before heading out on my walk, but I still had to take cover beneath a garage door overhang to escape a downpour the radar missed. The radar looked good again when I got home, so I packed the FZ80 and headed out for a bike ride, ending up at the Cliff House where I was dazzled by the wildly tossing ocean and a line of incoming storm clouds. I had good cover and figured I wouldn't be trapped for very long, but I was wearing shorts and became a bit chilled by the time the rain let up. There was another even larger and darker mass of clouds on its way from the south not far behind it, so I high-tailed it out of there and got home just ahead of the drenching rain.

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Shell Creek Road

 

We're heading out for my wife's spring break soon and plan to check out Shell Creek Road on our way to and through Carrizo Plain National Monument. Our destination is farther south, so we're hoping check them both out again on the way back. Work obligations kept me from going down for Carrizo's amazing bloom of 2017, so I'm eager to see the plain and its surrounding mountains in at least some of its potential glory this year. I'm also feeling some excitement building for this year's wildflower season all over the state, especially after so many years of drought. These photos were taken along Shell Creek Road in early April of 2008.

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Easing Into Spring

 

Colors of Spring on Bolinas Ridge

It was so windy when I set out for Mt. Tam yesterday that I considered turning back early -- for about a microsecond. The beauty of an ebike is that you can always crank up the power if the headwinds get too crazy. Also, other than the wind, it was a superbly beautiful day. 

Richardson Bay was full of scaups with their heads ducked into the water much like the proverbial ostriches with their sand. The avocets and black-necked stilts seem to have moved on for the most part, perhaps heading for their nesting grounds. (On my recent trip to Duxbury Reef I saw more American avocets than I'd ever seen in one place on Bolinas Lagoon.)

My first stop on Mt. Tam was one of the portable toilets at the uphill end of the Bootjack parking lot, where I was amazed to see a flock of calypso orchids. These are probably the most accessible calypsos I've ever seen: you wouldn't even have to get out of your car to view them. I'd planned to check for more along West Ridgecrest Road, but a CHP officer was guarding the gate for a film crew which he said had basically bought the road for the day. Even bicyclists were prohibited. If I'd been hiking I'd have been tempted to check it out and see what kind of car commercial it was (since it's usually car commercials going on up there).

I did find a nice patch of Indian warrior (Pedicuaris densiflora) growing on a mossy slope beneath Douglas firs and madrones. After I took a picture I stood up without looking behind me and cleverly placed my back foot on a slim, wet branch. Time slowed down as my foot slid down the branch, allowing me to savor the absurdity of my predicament, and to realize that I was, in fact, going to end the slide by crashing down on my butt. I got right up and thought no more about it until I got home and felt the painful reminder when plopped myself down in a chair.

A flock of band-tailed pigeons flew away as I approached the trail cams, but a red-shafted flicker stuck around to call out to the forest below from the top of a snag. The little seasonal creek was running strong in the aftermath of the week's rain, and the hills were green. The equinox was less than a week ago, and it definitely feels like spring.

Although I didn't see any ships on my ride north over the bridge, I saw two on my way home. The first one was a pusher tug called the Gulf Reliance. Vesselfinder.com lists it as being Alaska flagged, but it's pushing barges here in San Francisco now. What I'd assumed was a single vessel was actually the tug pushing the barge. Close on its heels was a huge container ship, the Singapore-flagged Wan Hai A08, heading to Oakland after its 2,600-mile voyage across the Pacific Ocean from Taipei, Taiwan, and the ports of Hongqiao and Ningbo, China.

Indian Warrior Wildflowers

Madrone Couture No. 1

Madrone Couture No. 2

Red-shafted Flicker

Calypsos in the Duff

Trade Goods Arriving From China

The black spot off the ship's starboard bow is a wing foiler.

Winging it on San Francisco Bay

Tam Cam Video Clips

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