Owls_Rattlesnakes_Coyotes_and_Newts_oh_my!
Greetings woofers fans!
I edited some of the spotting scope/iPhone video of the Great-horned Owl nest many of us watched move along at Batiquitos Lagoon. From talking to others who observed the nest, it sounded like the three owlets all fledged and were being cared for outside of the nest in the area by the adults. The last visit I was at the nest, one lone owlet was left in the nest and the adults were nowhere to be seen. A few of us were a little worried about this little guy! Following the nest was a fun side-track for over a month; visiting Batiquitos once a week or so was well worth the time! I hadn’t experimented with the iPhone adaptor I made for my spotting scope until this owl nest appeared. It is neat to see the system works fine and will improve with more practice. Also, in this little set of videos are the first two rattlesnake encounters I had in my vegetation plots that we are in the middle of doing on Camp Pendleton for a California Gnatcatcher study. Both snakes were literally in the middle of my plots – the first BIG one looked like it had eaten a small rabbit based on the bulge in its mid-section (this was right around Easter time, actually! Uh Oh!). The snake alerted me just in time as I was about 8 feet from it hiking uphill when it rattled. I snapped a little video and let this guy digest its meal. Just a few days ago, I was in another plot and a tiny rattlesnake appeared. This snake had only one or two rattles, so it was a light rattle and, again, I was glad it rattled as I was only a few feet from it. On one of the Least Bell’s Vireo surveys I do at a place called Roblar Creek on Camp Pendleton, I was surprised by the amount of water that was flowing in the creek and collecting in various rocky (granite?) pools. Not only was there water, there were also a number of California Newts breeding in the pools. I will be re-visiting this survey next week and hope to see some development – perhaps eggs or larvae? This past weekend it rained a bit on BASE, so I am guessing the pools and water will still be in good shape up there! The video series ends with a quick peek at one of the 4-5 coyote pups I spotted in the brush in the same plot that had the baby/young rattlesnake. They were tiny little guys – maybe a foot long and quick to scurry of and hide quite well in the ravine brush. As there are some Great Egret nests with nestlings at Batiquitos Lagoon nearby, I will keep and eye on those for fun and take more video. Along route 101 today, it looked like Least Terns were getting active in an area near Leucadia – I plan to visit that group of birds I saw tomorrow! Down in La Jolla, some of the cormorants have 2-3 nestlings along the cliffs…took some photos of them today. Walking on the beach today near Torrey Pines I continually see too much plastic in the rocks and sand. Having worked with sea-turtles in Tortuguero, Costa Rica a small amount and similarly with the Waved Albatross in Galapagos, it is quite sad to always see plastic waste near the ocean. These species (sea-turtles and Albatross) are hit particularly hard by free-floating plastics in the oceans and seas. It is such a wonder to see wildlife going through cycles of life – but – to see what a lot of species are up against in terms of human/wildlife interactions makes one wonder if things are moving forward in terms of humans becoming more conscious/conscientious about living in balance with the rest of the species out there! Anyhow, I like to post photos and videos of mostly nature and wildlife as a sort of celebration for those other species we share the planet with….so, enjoy the video, buy less plastic/packaged goods, re-use and re-use a good coffee mug, and focus on reducing waste (recycling is a good thing, but avoiding/limiting consuming packaged products would be a higher order goal!!). This video is dedicated to the Camden, Maine Kindergarten class and my mom – who has been volunteering in this class for years now (along with her regular work with Habitat for Humanity (among other things)) – at 75 yrs old she seems to blaze through days accomplishing as much as (or more) many of the 20-40 yr olds I know…..How many of you wake up at 5am and are at the local YMCA working out by 530am nearly every day?
Galapagos 2015-2016_part1
Hola Hola, Greetings, and Happy New Year from Davis, CA….
Finally, I have a new post after way too long with little news and zero photos uploaded in months! So, here it is – Galapagos trip #5 for me. On December 24th, 2015, I left SFO at 12:30am and flew down to Quito, Ecuador and met up with my mom, sister, brother-in-law, and nephews (after they had traveled/endured through some tough re-routing and changes in plans…as well as some lost luggage). X-mas was spent relaxing in Quito seeing Old-town and a dinner at the hotel. On the 26th, we flew through Guayaquil and on to Baltra Island in the Galapagos with 10 of the other folks who were onboard the boat The Galaxy with us for this journey in the eastern islands of the Galapagos. As I had done fieldwork on Española Island in three separate years (once for about 7 months and twice for about a month each visit), I felt like I was returning to somewhat familiar territory – and what an amazing place to be returning to! We arrived at Baltra Island’s airport fairly smoothly and we were on our boat the Galaxy by mid-day – unfortunately, 3 pieces of luggage did not make it to the airport with us!. I always pack as efficiently as possible and usually roll my main luggage onto the plane, but for this final leg in the air (it took 4 flights to get from SFO to Baltra), I opted to check my bag – and it was lost…oh well, lesson learned – and thankfully, all 3 bags that were lost arrived by boat about 24 hours later! Once onboard, our Galapagos naturalist Greg Estes (who I will write more about in later post) introduced us to the boat, the crew, and debriefed us on our first stop – Mosquera, a tiny islet between Baltra and North Seymour Island. After lunch and a quick motor around Baltra to our first anchoring, we loaded into the two pangas (dinghies) and jumped off to say hi to the sea-lions, gulls, lizards, iguanas, white coral sand beach, whale bones, and beautiful scenery around us. As the sun set in the west, Daphne Major with its famously studied Darwin’s Finches sat in the distance – its clearly volcanic origin sloping into the sea. Great first day in the Islands! Generally, on boat trips in Galapagos you motor at night between islands – which is what we did this night and then woke up anchored in Sullivan Bay. This day was full of a great walk through the lava fields on Santiago Island, a bit of snorkeling and penguin viewing, and hike up the steps to the viewpoint on Bartolomé. The views were fantastic in all directions and the volcanic landscape was awesome. We were treated to many Galapagos Penguin sightings (both in and out of water), some good warm water snorkeling (water temp was around 80 degrees F!), Blue-footed Boobies diving into the bay, and great food for every meal. There are plenty of photos in the slideshow of things I have touched on so far… From Sullivan Bay, we again motored at night and woke up in Darwin’s Bay at Genovesa Island. We did two walks here and snorkeled for a good while in two different areas in the bay. Genovesa was awesome! Tons of seabirds of quite a few species (Nazca, Red-footed, and Blue-footed Boobies, Frigatebirds, Galapagos Storm-petrels, Shearwaters, Red-billed Tropicbirds…). The Storm-petrels were flying in huge masses above the cliffs – 100s of 1000s of this species live and nest on the island. We spotted one of their predators, a short-eared owl on the edge of the colony. I snapped a couple photos of it flying and landing on the cliffs where the petrels were. It was neat to see an owl during the day! A few species of the boobies had nestlings, some being quite old but still with a lot of downy feathers. Seeing the Nazca Boobies was particularly fun for me as this is the main bird I was working with on Española – they are such amazing birds. The beautiful Galapagos Doves were casually mating and nesting along the trail we were on. These doves (and so many of the Galapagos birds!) are striking in their plumage and colors. The Red-footed Boobies are quite a sight too- their bills and feet covering a wide gamut of colors – wonderful. We saw some of our first Darwin’s Finch species here as well as some Yellow Warblers. Genovesa was a great island visit and from there we motored way south to San Cristobol. San Cristobol is one of the islands in the archipelago with a decent size human population and little city located mostly around the port. We visited a Galapagos tortoise hatchery and adult tortoise sanctuary here (I also visited tortoise sites at Santa Cruz, Isabella, and Floreana Islands). It was interesting and fun to see all phases of the tortoises growing up and older. In the afternoon, we did some more snorkeling and then headed off to Española Island (where part 2 of this series begins).
Season #3_USGS
Greetings from Davis, CA!
The weather has changed here in NorCal and we’ve had some light rains and cool days here lately. It is nice to have some changes in the weather and signs that the seasons continue to revolve….
I pulled out about 100 photos from the 6-month period I spent in San Diego County from March 8th, 2015 – August 24th, 2015 while working on a 3rd season with USGS as a surveyor for three bird species there (Southwestern Willow Flycatcher, Least Bell’s Vireo, and California Gnatcatcher).
The season started a little earlier this year than last year. We began with some new vegetation protocol learning lead by our fearless leaders SL, BK, AH, and KF. I thought some of our crew looked a little suspicious in their face masks (sun protection) – border patrol must do a double take if they see these USGS characters way down south in SD County? After the major fires of 2014 on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton (BASE) and elsewhere in San Diego County, a lot of habitat was lost for all of the birds we work with – the fires last year just kept erupting/popping up for a couple days in many areas it seemed. Some of the photos here show the extent of some of the burns – a lot of the areas were filled with invasive mustard (yellow flowered hillsides) as well as tons of burnt shrubs, cacti, and trees when we first got to BASE. The Gnatcatcher surveys were an addition to our surveys this year, and this gave us a good chance to see and explore a lot more of BASE via back roads, tank trails, and fire breaks. At times, I felt like I was preparing for a truck commercial while driving 4WD up steep hillsides and up to panoramic vistas on the BASE. Before too long, we were into out Bell’s Vireo surveys and shortly after those began, we started the Willow Flycatcher surveys. There was plenty to stay busy with this season, I felt. Added perks to the season were yet another CPR/First Aid class with our return instructor who always amuses us – and, we got to try out the new choking vests! (photo/video). Up at Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve (SMER) we had a new mix of people, some of the same local rattlesnakes, Red-Tails successfully nesting in the same tree just off the dirt road we use to get to SMER, and plenty of oranges and avocados for all! MAPS banding filled in some time once again with Warner Springs being one of my regular jaunts some Fridays. It was fun to see some birds in hand and keep in touch with the Pyle Guide. The Vireos seemed to have a decent year from my perspective (not sure what the esteemed science gurus in the OFFICE have found out from the DATA?) – there were plenty of nestlings and fledglings seen in many of my sites (photos/video). Surveys for Flycatchers even yielded a few nice highlights of color-banded birds, nests w/ eggs, and fledges (video). The Upper Margarita survey became a tactical/strategic adventure this year with truck leapfrog, escaping the survey via hillsides, and use of Fallbrook Naval Weapons Station for entrance and exits – fun. As usual, the end of season was filled with doing vegetation quads and transects – lots and lots of them! Finishing up the veg work in the area inundated with homeless camps added a little to the diversity and variety of the work – though, it really isn’t that fun to do a veg quad in the middle of an active homeless camp! Seeing a Vireo nest amongst a bunch of TP on the ground was a first for me – not the best sign of cooperation between Vireos and Homeless folks. Some transects through Typha/Scirpus proved to be a good excuse to sit or lie down on the job (photos). I don’t have any photos of the end of season SMER party – but I do have a few cool videos of long-boarders surfing Trestles (the end of one of my surveys) accompanied by Beyonce cuts (one of our featured musical guests at SMER party). Anyhow, I think the photos sum up much of the season. RD gets credit for foto of JG tactfully monitoring some Vireos in the SLR. I’m not sure who took the foto of Dr. Bowling with that cast of characters in the SLR – either way, I think we need to consider those dolls as possible SLR buddies next season?!?! Life in Davis is moving along with a few days a week spent working in Elementary and Middle Schools as a paraeducator III (working with students with ‘disabilities’) and wood work + a wood class I teach once a week @ UCD Craft Center. I’ll sign off for now – but, stay tuned…I’ll be posting more blogs soon!!!…warning, this is kind of a long slideshow (>16 mins?)…I figured 6 months is worth 16 minutes of photos, so be patient….
Fall_ once again_2015
Greetings from Davis, CA…
Keeping with the tradition of the past few years, I made a quick trip to the Eastern Sierra Nevada of California to see the Fall colors and to spend time in areas between roughly Bridgeport, CA and Bishop, CA. My first trip to the Eastern Sierra, I believe, was in 1986 while I was traveling solo in the SF area and I found my way out to Tuolumne Meadows via hitch-hiking into Yosemite from the Bay Area; that is a tale unto itself. After hiking around Tuolumne Meadows, learning some rock-climbing, and enjoying the vistas of Half Dome and other big granite features (none of which I take for granite…jejejeje) – I got a tip to check out Lee Vining and Mono Lake from some fellow hikers. So, I hitched up and down Tioga Pass and had my first experience in the Eastern Sierra and Mono Lake environs about 30 years ago!
For anyone who has never dropped down from the High Sierra (or the West side of the Sierra Nevada) into the Great Basin/High Desert areas of the Eastern Sierra, all I have to say is – go check it out if you like sagebrush, hot springs, huge lakes (i.e. Mono Lake) filled with birds, and wide panoramas of desert and mountains. When I arrived in Davis, CA in 1994, I was able to make a quite few trips into the Sierra and Eastern Sierra and I was fortunate to have a friend or two who helped me learn about and explore this special part of California.
Having grown up on the Northeast coast of the US where each season is full of changes in weather and especially things like Fall colors and deciduous trees dropping their leaves, I guess that is part of what leads me to get out and about in the Fall. Over the years, I have been to many places multiple times in this area such as; The Bristlecone Forest in the White Mountains, various trails and hikes all along/above route 395, many hot springs, Bridgeport, Bishop, Mammoth, a few of the massive sand dunes (i.e. Kelso…), the Alabama Hills, Owens Valley and River, and more!…. there is a lot to see/explore.
Seeing the gulls, shorebirds, grebes, and various raptors this trip around Mono Lake always inspires. One photo that stood out was of a falcon that came whizzing toward a pond near a hot spring – I was pretty sure it was a falcon so I started to shoot it as it approached…when it flew into a group of ducks flying over the pond, I didn’t realize it had struck one of them! When I looked back at the photos, I saw it had a duck in its talons, then dropped it mid-flight. Long-billed curlews, Avocets, Ibis, and Northern Harriers were also good sights to see.
Often, this time of year leads to some reflection and I think about the past year and experiences of the past. When I chose the James Taylor music to throw into this slide-show (I used JT last year as well for Fall_2014), I was reminded of the 9/11 tragedy in NYC and how JT sang ‘You can close your eyes’ as part of a memorial service at ground zero. Having grown up partly in NYC, I often reflect on the life in a big city and the vast difference of say being in wide-open spaces such as the Basin and Ranges of the Eastern Sierra vs. walking the city streets in the ‘concrete jungle’. I also consider the fact that two people from my high school (of a 300 student school) died that day (9/11/01) and the many other people family and friends knew who also died that day. Perhaps such thoughts are a reminder to me to make what I can of time and days and may help me keep perspective on daily life – not only for myself but for anyone else’s life/days in this world.
As I have finally landed in to my Fall-Winter sub-let, I am feeling more settled now after two weeks of having a more solid home-base! This post is a bit delayed in uploading, but better late than never? 19 seasons of field work has its ups and downs, and moving from place to place, State to State, and even country to country I think is beginning to tire me out a little more….I will be able post Season #3 @ USGS later today, I think. From Davis in the second rains of the Fall, I send a farewell for now….
Panama’s Canopy Tower – Part II
Hello Hello and Hola Hola –
Welcome back to Panama Trip – Canopy Tower – Sept 3-11th, 2015. Here is the next set of slides for you all. As I watched/edited the iMovie, it was easy to see how amazing life is just by looking at the images of things I saw in a short 8-day period!! Just to give you some perspective of an average day for me at Canopy Tower, I will just describe the routine:
Wake up at 5-530am or so (wow, pretty early for a “vacation”), get up to the roof by sunrise – or better yet – before sunrise, begin listening to the morning chorus of insects, birds, howler monkeys, start taking photos of birds feeding in the eye-level tops of the Cecropia trees that nearly touch the tower, grab a cup of coffee from the table on roof that has just been set up with coffee and tea, descend from roof for a delicious breakfast, take a few more pictures of any birds or perhaps the sloths visible from the dining room/living room/kitchen level 3 of tower, get ready for excursion, drive to morning site, walking, birding, wildlife viewing, taking photos, back to tower for delicious lunch, but – before lunch spot green iguanas and lizards in Canopy vegetation = take more photos, then eat, break time, up to roof for photos and wildlife watching, rest, rehydrate, get ready for afternoon trip, off to Pipeline Rd, birding, looking for wildlife, taking photos, looking at birds through scope/binoculars, back to Canopy, rest, delicious dinner, sunset on roof perhaps, resting, 7-9pm looking for night mammals with swiss-germans who have awesome spot-flashlight, photos of Kinkajou/night-monkeys, download images to iPad to see how they are turning out, share some photos through WiFi of Canopy Tower, sleep. Repeat daily.
Well, this set of photos shows more of the neat things we encountered around the Canopy, on the way to and on Barro Colorado Island, and at various local sites. I particularly enjoyed seeing the iguanas feeding in the local Cecropia trees, various colorful lizards prowling the vegetation along the fence, the night mammals like the the Kinkajous and Night Monkeys, perched and flying raptors – such as the Black Hawk-Eagle (photos), Short-tailed Hawk, and the Semiplumbeous Hawk (photo), the leaf frogs (some smaller than my fingernail (photo), and the common aquatic and wading birds one sees in the tropics like Jacana, Common Moorhen (photo), and Tiger Herons (photo). Birds like Black-Breasted Puffbird (photo), various kingbirds (tropical, photo), and flycatchers (Flatbill, photo) appeared in the local trees around the Canopy and on walks. Thanks to the few birds and wildlife that posed nicely for photos! If birds weren’t abundant or appearing at all, other wildlife often drew our attention in. Butterflies, leaf-cutter ants, howler monkeys, red-eyed tree frog larvae (tadpoles, photo), leaf bugs (photo), and various small to medium size lizards were fun to observe and take photos of. Seeing the night mammals ended up being fairly common as a few people were keeping and eye out for moving branches or shining a light into trees at night to look for movement. One Kinkajou spent nearly an hour wandering around the trees next to the Tower searching for ripe Cecropia fruits/seeds to eat. I will post some video of that in Part III. I think the images here show how diverse, beautiful, and amazing the tropical wildlife is – and this is just an hour from downtown Panama City!!! Really cool stuff. Looking forward already to another trip south before too long!!!!
This blog revolves around just about anything I happen to be doing, it documents places I travel to, and it is a place to share my interests with others online.
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