Vote for the 2016 Walnut Label

Windscorpian   

It's walnut harvest time. There's going to be a big crop and lots of neighbors and friends to share the bounty. Everybody gets to vote on the critter that goes on the label for the 2016 Dipper Ranch walnuts. Usually the label features one of the snakes that appeared on the ranch during the year, but there weren't many snakes this year. Why? Maybe because of the gray fox family that moved into the barn. Yes, foxes eat snakes. If you don't believe me, check out this video from the Camera Trap Codger.

I'm stubborn and even without a huge selection of snakes to choose from this year, I am not going to put some cutesy animal on the label. Instead, you get to choose among local animals I saw in 2016 which have a reputation of being creepy or strange, but really aren't. Mostly reptiles, spiders and bugs, but also some strange mammal tricks.

Climate Change Made Me Do It

A sapsucker stretches after its winter arrival at the Dipper Ranch orchard.
This one looks like a cross between the red-naped sapsucker and the red-breasted sapsucker.  

Me in October:

Hardly any walnuts have fallen on the ground at the Dipper Ranch and they're all pecked open by birds. There will be no walnut harvest party this year.  It must be the four-year drought. The walnut trees leafed out in June this year - two months late. It must be climate change.

 The Dipper Ranch walnut trees in December:

Here's a few thousand walnuts on the ground for you. Sorry, dropped them in their husks this year. And it's going to rain soon so you better pick them up before they mold. Isn't climate always changing?

Who Scrapes There?

The first time a bobcat goes by the camera in this time period is November 12 near first light.   

A few days after I posted the Puma Scrapes story, I took a hike with my neighbors. To celebrate each new year, we take a hike across our rural neighborhood, usually from one house to another. On this year's Cuppa Sugar Hike, we found a fresh scrape on a trail at the edge of a wooded area.

"What animal left this mark?" we wondered. Especially since the scrape was unusually shaped, more of a square than a rectangle, and with a long narrow scat at the back.

"No problem," I said, "I've got a wildlife camera mounted just uphill. We'll check which animal went by after the rain five days ago and then we'll know."

Listing Swallows

A male violet-green swallow lists to the side in the hot sun. July 4, 2014   

Swallows appear in large numbers at the Dipper Ranch from July through September. They have finished nesting and gather the tribe before they head south for their winter grounds.

Zombie Rodent

Mountain beaver (a.k.a. aplodontia) is one of the unusual mammals you get to practice camera trapping on at this workshop in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California. It took me several months to realize why this particular camera, Wingscapes Birdcam 2, would occasionally get great close-up nighttime photos with flash but never more than one. Something about the electronics in this model shut the camera down after one or two flash photos. This model is now discontinued. For more info about this unusual burrowing mammal go here and a fellow alumnus has better photos of the zombie rodent here.  

Dr. Chris Wemmer announced his 2014 camera trapping workshop - if you ever wanted to get serious about using trail cameras to understand the mammals on your study site or the back-40 then this five-day adventure is for you. In 2014, it will be July 13-18 at the Sierra Nevada Field Campus in beautiful Yuba Pass, California.

A Persimmon in Every Pot - the Woodpeckers

Female hairy woodpecker showing a black back with a white blaze down the middle and white checkering on her black wing feathers.
09/28/13 

The sapsuckers were the flashiest woodpeckers at the persimmon tree this fall. But there were several other woodpeckers that made appearances on the ripe glowing fruit and they challenged me to finally learn the difference between the hairy and downy woodpeckers. Well, at least the hairy part.

A Persimmon in Every Pot - the Sapsuckers

An agile red-breasted sapsucker feasts on a ripe persimmon.
11/10/2013  

Everybody likes the persimmon tree in the backyard in the fall. I've written about deer and coyotes picking up fallen fruit beneath the tree, and a raccoon family climbing its branches to feast, but this fall the tree's flying visitors caught my attention. And not all those flying visitors were birds.

More Owl Mysteries with a Goatsucker Thrown In

In the family of "goatsuckers", I first starting seeing these small birds hunkered down on the ground at night at the Dipper Ranch after we put a thick layer of gravel on the driveway.  

After the interesting comments on the driveway owl - whether it is a great-horned owl or a western screech owl - I want to share more owl photos.  Especially a small owl that shows up at the Newt Spring and then a goatsucker that surprised me on the driveway tonight.

Those night critters.

A Pile of Sawdust

Fresh sawdust chips on a trunk.

I noticed piles of fresh sawdust beneath a dying canyon live oak when I was chasing some cows out of The Pasture of Death last week. After unchaining the gate and opening it wide, I snuck through the forest to get behind the cattle and did a chicken dance to get those bossies moving into the proper pasture.  While waiting for the cattle to walk through the gate, I went back to look at the mysterious sign.

Earth Day and Change

This way or that way? As a large mammal, mountain lions have choices on where they can go but they are still blocked by roads and human conversion of natural lands.

Happy Earth Day. I am spending Earth Day moving my office which could be boring but has me thinking about climate change.

In the Provident Shadow of Omnivores

Nighttime silhouette in the wildlife camera at the cattle pen.

I felt restless in late November as I often do around the full moon, but I was also nervous about attending a four-wheel drive class. Meanwhile, the omnivores were leaving sign at new places on the Dipper Ranch, sometimes being rascals and sometimes making fortuitous appearances.

In the middle of the night before the 4WD class, I woke suddenly. Everything was silent. There were no kids or cats jumping on the bed, so I looked out the window to check on Orion's progress. Under the foggy full moon, the backyard was blurred by swaying tree shadows. Then I saw an especially dark shadow slink in a diagonal path. Was that an animal moving or was I just sleepy?

Snow Moon

Full moon through California buckeye tree at the Dipper Ranch, February 25, 2013

Late February's full moon is the Snow Moon.  In central coastal California, we had snow for about 4 hours this winter.

I meant to photograph the full moon just as it was coming over Georgia's Ridge. I was inside getting ready by cleaning my best lens only to get distracted by amazing reflections of the cowboy light in the newly cleaned lens.

Merganser Afternoon - Yellowstone Reflections

One afternoon in Yellowstone National Park I wanted to hike, but I was on my own and the Park Service strongly recommends that people hike in groups of three or more for safety in grizzly bear country. So I settled for a solitary stroll on the boardwalk at LeHardy Rapids on the Yellowstone River.

The boardwalk was too short to soothe my wanderlust, but it provided an excellent view of the rapids, so I settled onto the grizzly-free deck to watch the river noisily leap over and surge around rocks. Even here, in this little byway where the Yellowstone River regains its tumbling nature after leaving Yellowstone Lake, the park offered a rich opportunity to view wildlife. Out of a curtain of splashing bubbles, a bright orange bill appeared above a lowrider feathered back.

Fall at the Horse Meadow

When the days got short and the nights crisp, the animals came to the horse meadow. Mostly they came to eat the persimmons off the tree. Long retired to the meadow, the horse shared his only tree because he wanted to watch the visitors.

The raccoons came at night. Once when it was raining, they came during the day as if the raindrops hid their bandit ways. The mama raccoon led the parade with her back rolling up

Summer Water

Vultures checking out the new cattle trough.

Random Truth just posted great photos of bears bathing in cattle water troughs in the Tehachapi Mountains at his Nature of a Man blogsite. Go see them - they're hilarious!

So that got me thinking about two particular water sources at the Dipper Ranch this summer. One is a  spring that leaks out of a cut bank.  Usually, this has a bathtub size pool beneath it but with the reduced amount of rainfall this winter, the spring is barely dripping. By late August, the pool was just mud. So I dug a series of small pools beneath it to provide summer water for the wildlife, and put up a wildlife camera. Visiting this spring pool seems to be a family affair.

First Flight of the Humble House Finch

House finch nestlings  growing rapidly and waiting for more food.

The house finches won the battle of the porch again this summer. Last summer, I was delighted with the unobstructed view when we pulled down the old, sagging screen porch and replaced it with a new floor and open sides. Then the house finches discovered the porch with a view. They decided to try nesting there. "Oh, no, no", I told them, "Try the other 899 acres."

Extra Toes in the Redwoods

Large tracks on Windy Hill Open Space Preserve
(no longer sure whether these are mountain lion or not, see comments)

The San Francisco Bay Area Tracking Club will be holding their September tracking event at the Dipper Ranch on Sunday, September 9, 2012, 8 - 11 am.  Casual potluck afterwards for those who want to stay longer.  You do not need to be a member of the tracking club to attend this event, just interested in learning. Read on for details.

Letting Go at Point Lobos

Brandt's cormorant and nestlings on Guillemot Island at Point Lobos State Natural Reserve. Both male and female parents tend the nest. The nest is a pile of vegetation cemented together by guano. Cormorants wrap their webbed feet around the eggs to incubate them.  

In mid-June, I was passing up the California coast after attending the Navigator's graduation at Cal Poly. I drove coastal Highway 1 all the way from Morro Bay (after a brief visit with the peregrine falcon families at Morro Rock) to Pescadero which is the turnoff to the Dipper Ranch. It took all day, it was lovely and I stopped at Point Lobos State Natural Reserve to check on the Brandt's cormorants. I was tickled to see the cormorants still squatting on Guillemot Island.

Coastal Romance on the Rocks

Male Brandt's cormorant in breeding display - head tipped back over back, distinct bright blue gular pouch inflated, wings fluttering, tail cocked.

I took a photography workshop with Nate Donovan at Point Lobos State Natural Reserve in mid-March. I thought that I had been to Point Lobos in Monterey County before, after all, I moved to the central coast of California from Florida over 25 years ago. We got to the park early and I zoomed down the closest trail for a preview before the rest of the students arrived. Colorful rocky cliffs, foamy waves, wind-sculpted cypress trees and the dense bushy habitat of coastal scrub promising birds, lizards and small mammals with the sun's encouragement.  No, I'd never been here before. Not sure how I missed it.

I've toured the grassy hills of Palo Corona Regional Park above this section of the coast with fellow ecologists, and pulled ice plant at Garrapata State Park to the south, but never had I witnessed this rough and jagged shore with numerous small coves and changing vistas. Coastal California has so many beautiful places, it's hard to keep them all straight. The big clouds of a storm front were blowing in over the ocean and making large waves, so it looked like it was going to be a day of photographing white spray and aquamarine droplets flung at the rugged rocks. Except I got distracted by nature which tends to happen to me at nature photography workshops.

Earth Day Parade

Welcome back.  Ash-throated flycatchers fly up to the Western US to nest in cavities, often in manmade structures like fenceposts and telephone poles.

Saturday morning when I heard a familiar chirp-trill from the maples trees, I popped out of bed and ran around the house announcing, "The ash-throated flycatchers are back! All the way from Costa Rica! Get up, get up! Greet the arrival of spring!" Like a pesky dog, I was sent outside where the flycatchers entertained me by chasing each other at high speeds around the farmyard with loud "weet" calls and flashing of tail feathers.