Moving Sand at Ocean Beach

 

Moving Sand Along the Esplanade (March 7, 2023)

The battle between nature and civilization at Ocean Beach began in the 1800s, when San Franciscans started coming out to enjoy the amenities at what had previously been referred to as The Great Sand Waste. The Cliff House was built in 1863, and Adolph Sutro opened Sutro Baths in 1894. (The Sutro Baths building survived into the 1960s, when it was bought by developers who planned to tear it down and build high-rise apartments on the site. On June 26, 1966, it was obliterated by fire during deconstruction, then bought by the National Park Service in 1980.)

The original Beach Chalet was built right on the beach in 1892, but it was moved inland after a storm in 1914 nearly wiped it out, along with much of the beach itself. 

In the photo above you can see part of the Ocean Beach Esplanade that was built by Maurice O'Shaughnessy in 1928 to protect development near the beach. The sea wall between Noriega and Santiago streets wasn't built until the 1980s after part of the Great Highway collapsed onto the beach. When the area had been threatened by storms back in the 1940s the city had dumped tombstones taken from the Laurel Hill cemetery. 

During the last year or so I've often walked to the beach down Noriega Street and have been impressed by the nearly continuous need to remove sand from the Great Highway. The Noriega Street beach entrance sits between a set of dunes to the north and the sea wall to the south, and sand loves to pour onto the road through the slot. Just yesterday I was interested to see the latest attempt to control the sand and protect the road -- in part, it appears, by removing the slot.

Design plans from 2010 are still being carried out for the whole Ocean Beach waterfront. The artist's concept of how it will all look is quite nice (as those things go), and it will be interesting to see if it all comes to fruition. 

Noriega & Great Highway (February 14, 2023)

Noriega & Great Highway (March 3, 2023)

Noriega & Great Highway (March 22, 2023)

Two lanes narrow to one at Noriega & Great Highway (April 14, 2023)

Moving Sand at Noriega & Great Highway (April 25, 2023)

A Month Later: Storm-blown Sand along Great Highway (at Taraval, if I remember right)
(May 16, 2023)

Another Month Later back at Noriega & Great Highway (June 14, 2023)

Large-scale Beach Control Work at Noriega & Great Highway (June 27, 2023)

This is the view from about the same place on May 23, 2020.

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Stow Lake Herons

The three-heron nest.

 

I ride my bike past Stow Lake almost every day and keep thinking I should try to photograph the nesting great blue herons, so yesterday afternoon I finally went down there with the FZ80. There were two nests on the little island east of Strawberry Hill. One is packed with three young herons, and the other had two. 

I took a seat on a bench and watched and waited, biding my time watching baby swallows, swimming turtles, soaring red-tails, and numerous paddle-boaters, hoping a parent would fly back from their hunting grounds to feed them. Maybe an hour passed before an adult finally showed up at the two-heron nest. 

After the all-too-short feeding frenzy I rode down to the Cliff House to check out the pelicans on Seal Rocks. I hoped to photograph the huge numbers of them that I had seen there a few days ago during a ride with my wife, remembering all the cormorants I'd seen resting on the rocks back in early May, when there were no pelicans at all.

I was surprised to see that the Giant Camera was open, although it seemed a little forlorn with so little tourist traffic around the the still-defunct Cliff House.

The fog had begun to clear by the time I returned to Stow Lake, and I actually had some great light from my new position on Strawberry Hill. Again I waited and waited for an adult to show up, and when one finally did, it flew to the three-heron nest which was almost completely hidden from my new vantage point. Despite the excellent light and vantage point I had on the two-heron nest, no adult showed up, and I finally had to call it quits at 5 o'clock so I could get home for dinner.

Three Hungry Swallows

Up Periscope

Feeding time at the two-heron nest.

The adult heron paid no mind to several nearby groups of people with their blankets laid out.

The main menu item for the young herons back at the nest is probably gophers. This heron's quick stab was a miss.

Numerous pelicans resting on Seal Rocks.

Surf-fishing off Sutro Baths.

The Camera Obscura has re-opened (though maybe just on weekends).

Mostly fog-free afternoon light on a little playful activity at the two-heron nest.

An adult flies away from the obscured three-heron nest after a quick and noisy feeding. Even with both parents presumably feeding the young, their arrivals were few and far between.

Mama quacker.

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Solstice Hike

 

Heading down Mt. Tamalpais' Old Mine Trail, with Mt. Diablo on the horizon.

We woke up to a mostly clear sky with a fogbank looming above Twin Peaks to the east, but as the sun rose above Sutro Forest it seemed to suck the fog in from the ocean. By the time we left home for Mt. Tam the fog had pretty much covered the whole city, although the Golden Gate Bridge was still clear and beautifully lit by the morning sun. 

We began our hike a little after 8 a.m. under ideal conditions, sunny and cool. The loop was Rock Spring to Old Mine Trail, to Matt Davis Trail, to Coastal Trail, to Willow Camp Fire Road up and over West Ridgecrest Road to pick up the Cataract Trail back to the car.

The longest day of the year begins with the sun rising above San Francisco's Sutro Forest.

View from the mountain to the sea.

A rider on an electric mountain bike heads out the Old Mine Trail.

Acorn woodpecker.

A painted lady butterfly feeds on a cobwebby thistle, with an earwig also burrowing into the purple perianth.

Mt. Diablo view over Richardson Bay.

View of East Peak from Old Mine Trail.

Forest-floor fruiting of fog-drip fungus.

Resting fly.

Dappled light on the Matt Davis Trail.

One of several squirrels we saw along the Matt Davis Trail.

A common wood-nymph butterfly rests on a stalk of grass.

The grass was quite tall along parts of the trail. I picked up my second tick of the season somewhere along here, not noticing it until it began to burrow into the back of my thigh. 

Hike to the Sky

The wreck of the old 1941 Pontiac along the Coastal Trail.

Foxgloves in a meadow along the Cataract Trail.

A chipmunk appeared to be gathering seeds in the sedge along the side of the trail.

Bright-red canyon larkspur and yellow madia stand out on a sun-dappled, summer-green hillside along Cataract Creek.

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Red Shouldered Hawk Nest

 

After bringing a dead mouse to its young, one of the red-shouldered hawk parents prepares to fly off for more.

I was visiting Strybing Arboretum back on May 13 when I saw a red-shouldered hawk bringing a small branch to its nest in a eucalyptus tree back near the Children's Garden (a photo is at the bottom of the linked post). 

Back at home I looked up the length of their incubation periods and, based on my calculations, returned last week wondering if the eggs had hatched. I was a little perplexed when my wife and I got there and saw that the adult hawk spent most of its time standing next to the nest rather than sitting in the middle of it. The day was chilly and windy, and it didn't seem like the best time to leave incubating eggs in the open.

Then I wondered whether the "adult" I was looking at was actually a fledgling. But how could it have hatched and become so large already? 

What I didn't see until I put the pictures up on my computer screen back at home was that the little fluffballs of recently hatched hawk chicks were actually within the nest. One of each would pop its head up from time to time to be in the picture, but we hadn't noticed them from far below, especially with a skinny, leafy branch continually whipping up and down in front of the nest.

In any event, my wife and I went back for another look yesterday morning, and now the nest was empty! How could those little fluffballs have grown up and fledged already?! Does Nature really move that fast? 

As a matter of fact, the two fledglings had indeed left the nest, but they were perched nearby on a different eucalyptus tree. Almost as soon as we arrived, one of the parents flew in with a dead mouse. The two youngsters fought over it, but only one got the prize.

After waiting fruitlessly for a repeat performance, we eventually gave up and walked through the California Garden to exit the arboretum, stopping to enjoy the sight and scent of the big buckeye in bloom. 

Buckeyes are one of my favorite California native plants. The tree itself has a gnarly trunk with an intricate crown of branches and looks as beautiful when it's adorned with its large dangling seeds in the fall as it is when it's full of flowers in the spring. The white corollas with their long arcs of orange-tipped stamens are positively musical, and the huge and shiny mahogany seeds are delicious to look at (though poisonous to eat unless leached of their toxins). And if all that weren't enough, the wood is also excellent for making bow-drill fires. 

What I hadn't known until recently is that buckeye nectar and/or pollen is toxic to European honeybees. If there's a lot of buckeye and not much else near the bee hives, whole colonies can succumb to the toxins.

Red-Shouldered Hawk & Nestling (June 11, 2023). A second nestling shows up in other frames nearer to the adult bird.

Only one of the siblings came away with the mousy meal (June 16, 2023).

Hard to believe these young hawks were nestlings just a week ago. 

"Love to eat them mousies,
Mousies what I love to eat,
Bite they little heads off...
Nibble on they tiny feet."
--B. Kliban

Strybing Arboretum Buckeye & Honeybee

* * *

Fawn Season

 

After riding through the fog-drip that started just below Pantoll I had to pedal up past Rock Spring toward East Peak to finally reach the sunshine. Stonecrop and monkey flower were growing from crevices on this lichen-crusted boulder, and the gray-green oak in the foreground was in full flower.

Iconic summer weather, with fog still high on the mountain even in the late morning.

A couple of fawns hang out at the new trail camera location. It's too bad GardePro's information strip is overlayed on the image instead of placed below it.

I approached the new trail camera location prepared to find zero animal activations. They've only been up there a week, so even if it had been zero I'd have left them there another week. As it happened, the cams captured a few deer, a single gray fox, a couple of squirrels and steller's jays -- and a hiker. I don't know why I'm still surprised that hikers show up on off-trail cams. People roam all over Mt. Tamalpais. 

As I was about to ride back down into the fog at Rock Spring I saw this pale swallowtail butterfly (with still-pristine wings) fluttering around the chaparral pea and yerba santa flowers across the road. I kept hoping it would land and feed on the nectar of one of them, but it eventually sailed high into this oak to spread its wings and gather warmth.

A little later I saw it (or another one) fluttering around the chaparral pea again. It kept appearing to land but then it would flutter away before I could get a clean photo. It was only when I got home and viewed this image on a large screen that I noticed it appears to be ovi-positing on the pea's leaves. 

Riding back down toward Rock Spring I had just passed the Mountain Theater entrance when my bike spooked a pair of fawns that I hadn't even noticed, and then their mother. 

I was tempted to enter the woods to try to get a better view of them but realized it would be hopeless, even with the benefit of damp leaves that wouldn't crackle and crunch under my feet.

Fog still lingered over the meadow at Rock Spring when I arrived. I checked the area where I'd seen the hen turkey appearing to make a nest last week. The depression was still there, all the leaves and other detritus cleared down to bare dirt, but the turkey was long gone, there were no eggs, and a deer had unceremoniously deposited a generous ball of pellets at its edge. As I prepared to lock my bike to a tree before hiking to the trail cams, I realized the key to the lock had fallen off the keyring and was nowhere to be found. I left the bike unlocked and under the protection of the mountain gods and people's better natures.

There were many more yellow mariposa lilies in bloom this week, and insects were already taking advantage. I'm a little bit in awe of the fact that insects and flowers have their appointed times in each others' life cycles. The flower holds fast through its non-flowering season by bulb or seed, and I guess insects can be dormant as eggs (or the insects harvest from different sources throughout the year). But what about crab spiders, aka flower spiders, who can't fly? How do they spring into action and find their way to the mariposa lilies where their color gives them perfect camouflage?

The obvious answer to how they find their way seems to be that the females lay their eggs on or near the flowers, which are likely to grow again in the same place the following year. Apparently the spiders can alter their color somewhat when they molt, depending on the color of their host flower.

If you look closely at this photo (click to view larger) you'll see there's a carnivore also taking advantage of this mariposa lily. The skipper stopped by to sip sweet nectar, but was soon spooked away by a flower spider laying in wait.

I walked by this colorful patch of checker bloom once without taking a picture but succumbed to the temptation when I passed it again on my way back to my bike (which thankfully was still there). You can see some dogtail grass in there as well, and I noticed that a large patch of it that I'd photographed before in that general area has been overtaken by other grasses this year. 

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