Summer Solstice

June 24th, 2010

The Yuba River

The rushing Yuba River. All the snow has been melting in the high sierra, so i hear, so all the water is rushing down into the foothills. A friend and i went and sat by the river. It was amazing. Woodrat, snake or lizard of some sort, huge bull frog, deer mouse, fawn and deer, killdeer, turkey, and quail tracks along the bank. Hoards of cliff swallows flying in and out of their nests under the bridge. A hot yet beautiful day.     

mystery tracks

  Not sure what these guys are. i was with a bunch of folks, when we were looking at them, who had to be somwhere, so i didn’t get to study them closely. i guessed that they were tracks of the meadow vole.  One of the tracks is about   3/4 of an inch long.  What do you think? please let me know if you have an idea. 

Black - Tailed Deer

  The male black tailed deer or a “buck” as they are commonly referred to.  Soon after i took this picture i watched as he proceeded to scratch his underside with his large antlers. they seemed pretty unwieldy so it was a somewhat impressive feat. 

ground squirrel dust bath

   The Beldings Ground squirrel, or at least thats what i think it is. I was calling the ground squirrels around here California ground Squirrels earlier. But now i am thinking they are Beldings( spermopholis beldingi). If i read correctly they are both in this range, but the California has white dots on its back while the beldings is smaller and has a reddish brown back. These guys are reddish and smaller.

   Anyways the ground squirrel “bathes” by rolling around in the dirt, or what others call a “dust bath” . Look closely for the fine striations in the dust which are the marks of the squirrels hair as he rubbed about.  

turdus migratorius

       The tracks of the American Robin. The tracks below are from the Western Gray Squirrel (sciurus grisius).  The feet of gray squirrels are amazing. the ones out here are gigantic, so their feet are also exceptionally large, as well as extremely dexterous. This has come about from the amazing acrobatic lifestyle they lead: jumping about from tree limb to tree limb and literally running up large vertical tree trunks. I was observing one in a low branch before me the other day. His/her hands protruded an almost nimble intelligence, the mark of their high-wire lifestyle no doubt.

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Old Nevada City Airport

June 4th, 2010

lepus californicus

It was a true joy to find out there was a tracking club in my new backyard, other people who are actually interested in staring at the ground for hours on end like myself. good fun.

We met at the old Nevada City Airport just outside of Nevada City. Supposedly it was an airport in the 60’s. Now its a vacant lot that is used by “recreationalists” and a small group of people interested in wildlife tracking.

This is the Black-Tailed Jackrabbit. Check out the hind right foot -the track in the top right portion of the photo. Looked at by itself it could easily be mistaken for a small canid track. Notice how it’s slightly off-kilter  or asymmetrical. That gives it away as a rabbit print.

Rabbit feet are odd. They have five toes on the front foot and only four on the hind. My guess is that this is an adaption for speed and quick manuvering.  You can see the fifth toe on the front foot on the track in the very center of the photo. This animal was moving in a bound so the front feet land before the back feet do. That makes the tracks in the bottom of the photo the front feet.

milipede

The substrate was incredible on Sunday. It had rained Friday so the mud was sticky. Incredibly fine detail, and  gorgeous, like chocolate. Here’s a trail of a milipede.  The individual footfalls are actually visible as tracks. Incredible. Harder to see in the pic but amazing in the field.  In dust or sand milipede trails usually just show up as two rows running along parallel next to each other like railroad tracks.  The trail width in this pic is about half an inch.

psuedacris regilla

The hopping trail of a small frog, i was thinking the pacific tree frog (psuedacris regilla). The trail was a sloppy cord running through the mud. These tracks here were some clear ones.  None of us saw it in the field but when i showed this picture to a friend she pointed out that you can see the imprint of the body surrounding the tracks. The color is a little darker right where she /he hopped. Amazing. I didn’t even notice that.  Of course she doesn’t even do tracking much.

mystery invertabrate

The trail width on this guy is about half or three quarters inch wide. Some suggested  beatle. A bit large for a potato bug I thought.

callipepla californica

The walking trail of a California Quail. I have been in California for years and i still can’t get over how stunningly beautiful these guys are. There coats are just stupendous, dark blues fading into grays, with black diamond patterns surrounded by white.  that’s the males. The females are browner. One of these tracks is about an inch and a half in length.

spermopholis sp.

A spermopholis species, I think the Beldings Ground Squirrel but perhaps the California. I think all the yellow stuff is pollen from the pines. One can differentiate ground squirrel tracks from tree squirrel tracks by the front feet. the fronts on ground squirrels are asymmetrical while the trees are more symmetrical. In this photo the front track is the lower right print on the bottom. Notice how it has somewhat of a curved appearance in the toe structure.

pinus ponderosa

The new needles of the Ponderosa Pine.  The ground and cars were covered in bright yellow powder, pollen from the abundant pines in the area. Life is beautiful.

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Ursus Americanus

May 28th, 2010

ursus americanus (black Bear)

Talked with my neighbor who has lived here for thirty years. He knows the land very well and also saw the dead coyote. He also thought it was the mother of the pup. But a another friend I talked with said he thinks the pup survived. That was just his hunch. I hope hes right. Otherwise I’ll be heartbroken.

Anyways its been raining on and off for the past week or so. Went out for a bike ride yesterday and followed an old mining road down to the stream. It had bee raining all daybut there was no precipitation for the moment . I stopped my bike when I noticed the track above.  Thats a regular ball point pen for size comparison. I was amzed to see completely fresh bear tracks. The rain had just stopped and these tracks had absolutely no precipitation marks in them. The tracks were very fresh and I thought that I  had probably scared him off. The trail was going up the road and then it turned around and headed back down the road. He had probably heard my squeaky, wet breaks, turned around and bolted.

bear front and hind

Perhaps these prints are easier to see. Thats the front-left track of the bear below with the hind-left track above in a walking gait. Some natives of america called the black bear “brother”. For those who have seen one up close walking around you can see why. But unlike us,  bears have a foot structure where the smallest toe is on the inside as apposed to our foot where the Biggest toe is on the inside.

can you see the trail?

As I followed along the road here’s what the trail looked like at times. Perhaps its tricky to see. Can you see the alternating footsteps of the trail, showing up as light splotches in the grass? Because evrything was so saturated with moisture from all the rain, the tracks were showing up in many different substrates:   soil, grass, leaf debris and gravel. I followed him ( or maybe her?) for about a quarter of a mile and then lost the trail when it came down to a riverbed.

debris

Perhaps it’s too difficult to see in the photo but can you see the bear track taking up a significant portion of the bottom of the picture?

right-fore black bear

See the tiny inner toe? These tracks measured about six and a half inches in length with the claws.

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Coyote

May 10th, 2010

Western Coyote (canis latrans)

The illustrious coyote.  The female behind my house, perhaps this is her, is raising pups currently. I found one of them, or rather one of them found me, one rainy night. It was very cold out a couple weeks ago, hail and slush covering the ground. I was about to turn in for the night when I heard some strange wailing sounds. “An owl perhaps”, I thought. I went to investigate and in the dark night a little form waddled up to me, calling. I picked him up and put him in my jacket. His brother up the hillside however wasn’t cooperative. When I tried to get him he retreated under his log and growled at me. Anyway I brought him into my bed to warm up. He smelled of skunk, I think he must have gotten sprayed, and kept him in my room for a few days feeding him goats milk from the local farm. I worked during the day and would come back home at night and take care of him. I got a taste of what having a baby is like. Its like having another full time job when you come home at the end of the day from your full time job.

Anyway after a week of going on no sleep ( he would bite me in the middle of the night cause he wanted to feed) I was starting to go insane. I asked a neighbor who has been living on the land for a long time and she said I should put him back. When my first found him my initial thought was that his mother had been hit by a car, so I hesitated, fearing he wouldn’t survive. I put him back on a Sunday morning and came back the next morning to find him gone. I hoped the mother got him. A little later I came upon a dead coyote off the bottom of the driveway, a small one, perhaps female, about one hundred feet from the road. Judging from the rate of decomposition of the body I guess she would have died a few weeks ago, about the time I found the baby. Heartbreaking.

Perhaps I should have kept him, but i wasn’t actually allowed to have pets in my room.

California ground squirrel (spermophilus beecheyi)

The california Ground Squirrel, or perhaps the Beldings Ground Squirrel. I am not sure which one. The Beldings is smaller and has a red strip on its back,  but ground squirrels are fossorial or diggers, and the soil is very red here and stains everyones shoes and livestock a dull orange color, so maybe its just an orange- stained california ground squirrel. Anyway I found along the road where these track were some patches of mussed-up dirt. At first i thought they were quail dust baths but then  a couple days later i saw a ground squirrel in one of them and realized they were probably their dust baths.

pacific tree frog (psuedacris regilla)

Can you see the little guy? I was walking along the river bed down the road and I stopped and sat down to look at the cool quartz rocks beneath my feet . I was sitting there looking at the rocks for a few minutes until I realized i was also looking at a small amphibian.  These guys make a chorus of sound all night in the pond behind where I live.

Bullocks Orioles nest building here, as well as Black -Headed Grossbeaks. Saw  a brilliantly colored Western Tananger and a Townsend Warbler a few weeks ago. Yelow warblers calling behind where I work.  Two Great Horns calling at night.

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Back in Business

May 6th, 2010

Okaaaay! In our last episode our hero stood in horror as his camera sunk to the bottom of a river high in the Sierras.

Got it back! horray. Some difficulties presented themselves however. I took my waterlogged camera into best buy to take advantage of the warranty that it had on it. However the repair folks deemed it too expensive of a fix to actually repair it. So they said I should just receive a new camera of a similar model. One problem. Their new “upgrade”, the canon 120 is not as nice as their older model the 100, the one I had. Unfortunate. I tried to persuade the service people at the store to give me my camera back, but they didn’t want to. Very sad.  The picture quality seems to be just as good though, which i guess is the most important thing. The actual camera though just is not an upgrade. for some reason they have used cheaper parts in a newer model.  I feel unsatisfied. oh well.

So anyways here are some pictures when i got here to grass valley a month ago!

Black Oak (quercus kelloggi)

In the Sierra Foothills so black oak and ponderosa or yellow pine are the prdominant tree species. Here is a small branch of the black oak just leafing out. Also notice the beautifully colored catkins hanging below.  Of course all of the leaves are actually full size now but its been a pleasure watching them grow and grow.

black-tailed deer (odocoileus hemionus)

There are many deer here. Here is one of their trails, a flurry of hard edged hoofs imprinted in the  soil.

black-tailed deer (odocoileus hemionus)

These two lovelys were part of a herd of eighteen deer! At I met them on a logging road. They kept trying to pass me. They would walk carefully up to me very close, almost pass me, then get spooked and turn around and run away. they kept doing this over and over again, about six times. I was in no rush so i just stood there and watched them. took some pictures. the community here has lived on this land for thirty years and has not allowed hunting of any kind for all that time. So the deer herd up in huge flocks and you can walk right up to them like at a national park.

These are the black tailed or mule deer. More bulky and less skittish than the eastern white tailed. In general you can get much closer to them.

Close up of the beautiful Black tail.

Robin (turdus migratorious)

Some robin tracks in the vibrant orange soil found in the sierra foothills.

black-tailed jackrabbit ( lepus californicus )

The tracks of the black-tailed jackrabbit. Notice the brilliant orange soil and little gold flakes saturating the soil. These are mica but there is alot of gold in these parts, in some places the land being entirely stripped from goldminers in the early 1900’s.

The “football” or triangle shape of the track marks the passage of the rabbits. Rabbit tracks are often indistinct as their feet are entirely covered in fur.

gray fox (urocyon cinereoargentus)

The right front and hind tracks of the gray fox trotting alongside a deer.

wild turkey (meleagris gallopavo)

A walking trail of the wild turkey.

a track jumble

can you pick out the trotting trail of a gray fox through the entire length of this photo?

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Update

April 13th, 2010

While exploring the incredibly beautiful local river i dropped my camera in the water.! Darn. Now it is not working too well. I will try to get it fixed soon and put up some pics of the California wilds.

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Cross Country

March 19th, 2010

field in Maryland

I first landed in Maryland on my venture west. I drove through New York and Pennsylvania and spent the next morning taking in the countryside. The pictures above are from that morning. An old corn field and some red fox tracks in the frozen mud of the field.  Well, part of it was a corn field. A bunch of woodpeckers making alot of noise, perhaps Red-headed? And a giant flock of Grackles, swarming the sky. There was also a huge flock of crows that stretched across the sky at evening and during the next morning. Probably going to and from their roost.

DAWN-MD – Audio sample from Maryland, USA.

here is a sound recording fom that same field.

Tennessee Sunrise

Next i landed in Tennessee, surely one of the most special places ever. Driving through Virginia was incredible. The Shanendoas are magical and i wanted to stop and just explore, but another part of me just wanted to drive. I can’t beleive how cool Tennessee is. The smokeys are so amazing and Nashville is unbelievable, the people, the music, the land, the southern warmth. Just awesome. i listened to gospel the whole way through and was converted. Thats that!

I got the sense that Tennessee is a great gift to the world.

Here’s an audio sample from Tennessee. Recorded in the same horse pasture as where the picture above was taken:

DAWN-TN – Audio bit, Tennessee.

Arkansas Swamp

After i hit Tennessee i turned and headed west! Woohoo! That night I got to Arkansas (Tennessee is a really long state!) Driving over the Mississippi was awesome. Trees of some sort growing out of the water and tons of white egrets. there were these strange little mud- minture, animal houses of some sort in the mud of the swamp. About two inches high and 2” across. Like some sort of insect house in the mud. It had a hole at the top abouthalf an inch wide that ran all the way down into the ground. Pretty cool little huts.

Open Road in Texas

Texas was next on my pathway. Texas had the nicest rest areas. The one i saw was huge and fancy, kind of like some fancy outdoor arena. Everything in Texas seems to be huge. The cars, the wide open land, the people. Some hellish cattle lots though, which was really horrible. the worst part was that the one i saw was the same on that was there when i drove through there six years ago. Texas was Frigid! It was mostly the wind. there are just no wind blocks and everything is so open, the wind just rips across un-blocked.

Here is an audio recording of roadside Texas. The bird is a Western Meadowlark, one of a few that was  serenading my morning:

DAWN-TX – Texas audio sample

Albuquerque New Mexico

Nest stop was the high desert of Albuquerque, New Mexico, a truly majestic place. i was fortunate enough to visit a friend there were i could rest and recuperate for a few days.  He showed me around the desert which is a tracking heaven! Unbelievable. here is a buck rub on a small sapling in the desert:

Antler rub, New Mexico

Male deer will thrash up saplings in the spring by rubbing their new antlers  in an attempt to remove the velvet fuzz that covers them. I guess it itches pretty bad which makes them want to rub. Tracks of Coyote, Bobcat, Skunk, deer and many more.

MRNG-NM – audio sample, New Mexico

(Thats a Canyon Towhee trilling)

Albuquerque was bloody cold. It was warm once i hit Tennessee and I thought it would be warm there on out but I was mistaken. New Mexico is high and dry. It was snowing on and off most of the time i was there. Or rather a kind of hail thing. It was weird as it would often be completely sunny and be hailing/snowing at the same time. Usually from a cloud that covered only part of the sky. The cool thing there was that it was so expansive you could see a couple different weather events as you looked out across the landscape. Snowy, sunny, snowy, etc.

Back on the road. A long drive, an incredible, undescribeable drive, going through some of the most beautiful landscapes, to California. My body started to hurt at this point from being stuck in the same position for a week. My elbows started to hurt. weird. Desert. cactus. wildflowers. bikers. green rolling hills. Rollercoaster like road. Oil mines. Incedble land. beauty. excitement. Pacific Ocean. California. It felt awesome and weird to be back in California. Awesome cause it was beautiful and weird cause this was the first time i had driven solo across the counrty, so suddenly i was on the other side of the world.

i drove to Morro Bay a stunning seaside tourist town north of Los Angeles and baptized myself in Mother Ocean. A Volia’ :

Amazing Morro Bay , California, USA

MROBYCA – some seaside music

Ground squirrels scampering among the rocks, Black Oystercatchers calling loudly and feeding at the waters edge, Brown Pelicans, Surfers riding the waves, a Sea Otter floating so contently in the channel on his back feeding on something i couldn’t see, And a huge stunning tan-brown dome rock rising right out of the water. Gulls nesting all along the cliff edge and sparrows singing lush-ly.

Awesome. I drove up Hwy 1 along the coast and soaked in the expanse of ocean. Picked up some young hitchhikers who were also headed to the bay area. The girl was quite the talker and informed me of a great number of things. Many words. I was glad for the company. Got to San Francisco late that night and woke up the next morning to watch the sunrise on the bay. Gulls, a harbor seal, A kingfisher  (which was awesome seeing as i had never seen one there before) and of course the everpresent homeless people, of which, technically, I was, this time, one of.

Thanks United States of America! The trip was truly stunning and life changing. I feel alittle differnt in a way that I can’t quite pinpoint yet having driven across the county. Some sort of Independance or something like that.

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Thanks Rhode Island!

March 6th, 2010

CRLwren – Carolina Wren audio sample

Well, spring is here in Rhode Island. The ants are coming out in the house and the birds are singing their spring songs. Still cold though.  A Carolina Wren (thryothorous ludovicianus) has been singing in the bushes outside my window at dawn.  Here is an audio sample of his song above.  The Titmice are also singing alot.  Actually that bush outside my window harbors all sorts of birds. They seem to hunker down in the thick of it almost every morning. Mostly a pair of Blue Jays, as well as a pair of Cardinals, the Wren, White-Throated Sparrow and Junco flocks moving underneath.  The brush is only a couple feet away from my window so I get some splendid views of them waiting out the snow storms.

Found a roadkill female Ring-Necked Pheasant (phasianus colchicus) the other day. Lots of roadkill. i think the warmer weather is causing some animal movement. A close up of her wing feathers above.

Ring-Necked Pheasant (female) wings

Her wings. Ultra camoflauge patterning when you look close.

Breast and back feathers

Some breast  and back feathers.

tail feathers

Pheasants have very long and lustrous tails.  Not native to North America but a beautiful foreigner non-the-less.

Well, I am off to California. Will be driving through the southwest to do some sight seeing. Rhode Island has been very beautiful and has treated me well. I’ll miss NE but looking forward to some new horizons.  Thanks Rhode Island!

RI red fox (vulpes vulpes)

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Teeming with Life

February 23rd, 2010

It is  a crazy world out there. Northern Rock Barnacles (balanus balanoides). A crustacean and a fascinating creature. I was at the beach, looking at them under the surface of the water, when i realized that they were moving- they all had antenna-like wisps moving in a “scooping” fashion throught the current. These little plumes, kind of like a peacock tail, moved in and out of this little crustacean in a rhythmic, undulating pattern. I was shocked. I had never noticed this before yet have walked around on these little guys all my life. I knew they were alive but not this alive! I guess they feed by filtering something from the water. ….. and that would be “planktonic organisms and organic matter” floating in the current. The antenna are called “Cirri” and are actually their legs? strange and incredible. It is a crazy world. I was struck at how rich the salt pond i was exploring was. Simply teeming with life. Unbelievable.

Hugest Mink Ever

Okay, so then i walked a little ways down the breachway and was blown away again. This time by witnessing the tracks of the biggest mink ever. At least the largest that i have seen. He was a beast. The mink (mustela vison) is related to the weasel and lives in aquatic habitats. This was the first time i have tracked the animal in a salt water system so the rich abundance of marine life must keep him plenty healthy and robust. At first i thought i was looking at the trail of a small dog, until i recognized the characteristic “lope”, a gait it often uses to get around, stretched out in the sand before me. He was so large he actually left impressions in some firm sand. Staggering.  For a size reference look at the mouse print in the middle-left of the bottom mink picture above (you should be able to get a blown up view if you click on the picture). Its a little difficult to see, but that’s the hind foot of a mouse heading in the opposite direction of the mustelid.

deer trail along edge of pond

A deer trail skirting the edge of the salt pond at sunset.  The trail paralleled the waters edge  and was partially underwater at times.

Who made these tracks?

snailtrails

That’s right.  Snail. Or more specifically the Common Periwinkle ( littorina littoria). If I had just seen the prize for the biggest in species, than this was the prize for the slowest.  This is ten minutes of trail right here. But i watched him move. He was actually moving his body one side at a time: left, right, left, right, like a human being with legs except in slow motion. It’s a whole different world for these guys.

The breachway had some cool rocks in it. Mergansers, Grebes, and Gulls chilling out on the current, fishing or following me around ( hoping I’ll feed them! -gull-).  See the snails mixed in there?

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Walk at the Beach

February 21st, 2010

Went to the local beach and walked about. As i was standing on the rocks taking this picture of the sunset a merlin (falco columbarius) flew right in front of the camera in close pursuit of a small song bird.  The poor little prey let out a sharp cry which alerted me to the chase in the first place. I dropped the camera to see the song bird catapult itself into the crevice of the rocky breachway i was standing on. The raptor hovered in front of me for a moment looking angrily at the rock crevice where its possible dinner had flung itself into, and then flew back into the marsh.

It could have been a sharp shinned hawk. It was a small raptor, but it was more black and white streaked and not very bluish or grayish.

Would have been the perfect bedtime snack. Too bad.

Vulpes vulpes, the red fox. He hunts along the dunes at the beach in search of  the  cottontail and other creatures that make their homes there.  Unclear tracks but you can still see the distinguishing trademark: the chevron or boomerang shaped bar at the bottom of the front track, which in this photo is the track on the bottom. See that crooked darker line? Thats it.

“Goldenrod”  ( solidago canadensis) at sunset. The fluff is what’s left when the cheery yellow flowers disappear with the summer warmth. Recently read that when Henry Ford wanted to produce a cheaper version of the rubber tire for his ford automobile, he asked inventor Thomas Edison (The person who made the light bulbs we use ) to come up with something cheaper than the rubber they were having to import from overseas. After a little while the prolific  and hard working Edison came up with a cheap rubber made from our very own native plant, the Goldenrod.

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