This jay flew down into the garden a few days ago. They’re like the coyotes of the bird world: adaptable, tough, mischievous—and smart.
On left: Rufous-sided Towhee in garden this morning, shot through kitchen window,
Ain’t he handsome?
On right: Deerskin from road-killed fawn I found near Gualala (CA) a few months ago. I skinned it, then cut up the meat and put in the freezer. I stretched and salted down the hide for a week, then sent it via UPS to a tanning place in Pennsylvania; and voila!—6 weeks later the beautifully tanned hide came back (via UPS). What a win-win situation from an animal that would otherwise have rotted on the road.
“In the bird gallery of The Natural History Museum in London there is a nineteenth-century glass cabinet the size of a circus car that may have once belonged to William Bullock, the London Museum curator. The cabinet is large but easy to overlook–from a distance it looks like a neglected herbarium, one in which the foliage has been allowed to go brown and twiggy. Up close, this desiccated forest blooms with hundreds of hummingbirds posing stiffly on every branch, their iridescent plumage only slightly dulled by the passage of two hundred years.”
-by Judith Pascoe, Questia
About 6 weeks ago, schools of sardines materialized off our coast, the pelicans started dive-bombing, the bigger fish arrived, and fishing has been great ever since. Halibut, sea bass, rock fish — all brought in by local boats. Fisherman Josh says, “The ocean’s healthy.” Believe me, fish eaten the same day as caught are different from anything you find in a market.
And just now, sitting in the morning sunshine in the garden, I noticed honeybees everywhere. Bee colonies got knocked hard by diseases (and crop poisons) in the last 10 years, but are on the rebound, at least around here. Right now they’re brushing golden pollen onto their hind legs, which they’ll take back to the hive. It’s win-win, since they’re pollinating plants while gathering food. (Is this inadvertent? Maybe not. )
Not everything is doom and gloom.
Bee photo from: https://www.dereila.ca/whispers/two.html
My favorite flyers in these parts, the birds I most like to watch, are the turkey buzzards. They don’t have the noble heads or curved beaks of hawks, but they are unsurpassed in the air. Yesterday I went for a run to a swimming hole. As I got out of the water, a lone turkey buzzard was sailing in circles over me; riding updrafts effortlessly, no wing action at all. For some reason, he kept circling, and I kept watching. After a while I could almost feel myself flying, surfing the air currents. It was a magic 5-or-so minutes. Then another buzzard floated into the horizon, then another, until there were five of them circling. In this photo, look at the pattern of the “shoulders” and body to pure flight feathers.
-photo from https://sfcitizen.com/blog/tag/vulture/
Found while skateboarding in Pt. Arena (on road down to cove). All I did was trim it, oil skin a bit and — ahem, special effects dept. — add a bit of red to mouth with a red Pentel. It’s mounted on a piece of driftwood.
California’s state bird. The males (with topknots) are almost always the sentries. This guy was sitting on a beanpole in the garden yesterday, watching over a brood of chicks scratching around on the ground. Quail colonies have been steadily increasing here over the years. They are all over the place now. They’re members of the pheasant family (Phasianidae), as are chickens.
This big flock of beautiful wild pigeons inhabits a few square miles in my neighborhood. They, along with blue herons, are the most wary of local birds. When they come in like this, the slightest bit of motion, even when we’re inside looking through windows, will set them off in a flurry of wings and noise. (Also, I’m convinced animals feel it when you look at them.) We were having tea this morning when they helicoptored in. I crept over to the window with my Canon 20D. Look at the bird coming in for a landing on the right. — poetry of motion.
Friday I worked on my (irregular) email newsletter GIMME SHELTER most of the day (slow writer) and around 6 took my paddleboard down to the lagoon. Incoming tide, headed into one of the secret side channels, maybe 25′ wide’ winding thru mudflats and pickleweeed. No soul in sight. Gliding along prone, @water level, get v. close to birds. Elegant egrets, wary blue herons, cloud of red-wing blackbirds at one point. Water warm from day’s sunshine, headed into small side channel, gliding thru cordgrass. Pulled board up on mudflats, stripped and coated every part of my body I could reach with gooey black mud that was pungent with ocean & sea minerals. Dried a bit in wind, then jumped in deeper channel to wash mud off. paddled back to dock and here was fisherman Andrew, pulling in with 4 fresh halibut. I bought a 7-pounder, brought home and filleted. Great evening at seashore.
An article in the SF Chronicle yesterday stated that “Sea otters along the California coast are dying off faster than at any time since the late 1990s, a disturbing trend that experts say is partially due to human-caused water pollution, the U.S. Geological Survey reported Tuesday.” Vital Stats: Average 4 feet long; males weigh about 65 pounds, females 45 pounds. They have webbed hind feet, strong canine teeth, retractable forepaw claws, closable ears and nostrils for swimming, and dense, waterproof fur.Habitat: Found near shore in shallow waters, generally 115 feet deep or less. Kelp beds are the ideal environment.Diet: Carnivorous. They eat 20-25 percent of their body weight each day of invertebrates such as abalone, clams, sea urchins, crabs, barnacles, snails, squid, chitons, worms and sea stars.Photo by Eliya on Flicker
