Muir Woods

Visited Muir Woods yesterday, and took some less-than amazing photos with my iPhone; I was too lazy to bring my SLR, a decision I sort of regret. Although carrying the huge camera with me on the hike we ended up doing wouldn’t have made me happy, so it was probably for the best.

These redwoods are not the same species as the photo I posted a few days ago. These are Coastal Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens). This species has the distinction of being the potentially tallest living organism on earth.

Sometimes I take redwoods for granted, living here in northern California where I get to see them regularly. But then I remember how truly magnificent they are, and I am grateful to have them nearby. Yesterday was one of those days. I also love the ferns and the fungi, and pretty much everything else about the redwood forest.

I’ve been in love with redwood trees since I was very small; the house where I lived throughout most of my childhood had a massive redwood tree growing in the front yard, and I thought it that tree as a constant companion. I was heartbroken, after we moved out of that house, when the new owners cut it down. (I still haven’t forgiven them).

CNPS Field Trip

Went on a field trip today with the local native grasslands society (California Native Plant Society), although the site we visited was already very familiar to me – it’s our Western Pond Turtle field site in Lake County, California. It was different being up there and *not* looking for turtles. I learned some things about plants (which is good; I’m ridiculously ignorant about plants), saw and heard a bunch of great birds (including pileated woodpeckers and MOUNTAIN QUAIL! Only the second time in my whole life I’ve ever seen mountain quail).

The star of the day, however, was this little ring-necked snake. Such beautiful colors. Now I’m really looking forward to the start of my field season less than a month from now.

 

Fairfield Osborn Preserve

Took my students on a field trip this week to one of my university’s nature preserves. We were mostly looking for signs of Sudden Oak Death on trees, but also managed to find some other really cool things. I’ll combine some photos from both days (I have multiple classes, so came out on two days).

The star of the show was this newt, which I’m calling a Taricha granulosa, or rough-skinned newt (I don’t think torosa are found this far south very often?), but I also loved the southern alligator lizard (Elgaria multicarinata), the trillium, the Pacific chorus frog (Pseudacris regilla), and the western fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis), and whatever sort of gorgeous fungus that might happen to be.

Red-legged Frog Survey

I did something really cool this evening: went out and surveyed for red-legged frogs (Rana draytonii), which are an endangered species in California. We found four frogs, and they are SUPER ADORABLE! Also, I look like a total dork in waders, but it was a really good evening. 🙂

Note – in the photo with the three frogs, the two on the ends are red-legged, and the one in the middle is a bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus), a species that is an exotic invasive in our area.

Biology Field Trip

Here are some photos from a field trip that I took back in April to the Fairfield-Osborn Preserve in Rohnert Park, a nature preserve that is owned and maintained by SSU. It was a field trip for my Diversity, Structure and Function class, a class which gave a systematic overview of the whole range of life on Earth, from bacteria through plants and animals. Cool class. 🙂

For our field trip, we just went out to the preserve and tried to identify as many different organisms as we could, armed with all the knowledge we’d (hopefully) gained during the course of the semester. Here are a few of my favorite things that we saw that day:

Western Fence Lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis)

Me holding the lizard:

A scorpion (maybe the California Forest Scorpion, Uroctonus mordax?). OMG SO COOL! I didn’t know until fairly recently that we had scorpions up here. But we just turned over rocks until we found this little guy. Adorable!

Pacific Chorus Frog (Pseudacris regilla). Also incredibly adorable:

Another view of the chorus frog:

A California Slender Salamander (Batrachoseps attenuatus). It’s amazing the cool creatures that can be found under rocks!

Spring Break Fun!

We’ve been on Spring Break this past week (later than just about everyone else, it seems), and the Bio Club at school (of which I am a member) had some fun activities planned. We went on two of them – a trip to a wild animal park called Safari West, and tidepooling at Pinnacle Gulch, near Bodega Bay. I also did a couple of other local things – I did some honest-to-goodness scientific research, counting pollinators on a species of wildflower that grows only at vernal pools, and I fed the animals at the wildlife rescue. Here are some photos from the two most photogenic adventures:

We went to Safari West on Wednesday, and it was a great day. I took a bunch of photos, and it was nice to have the camera out. It had been a while since I’d done any photography, what with being so busy with school.

At the park, we were given a walking tour, and then a two-hour tour on the safari truck, where we drove through the park, which has been arranged to have the animals in as natural a habitat as possible, and the truck goes into the “enclosures” (some of which are several acres large). It was a really cool place, and best of all we got in for free, because the woman who gave us our tour is a member of the Bio Club.

Here are a few of my favorite photos taken at the park:

A ring-tailed Lemur (pregnant, maybe?):

Ring-tailed Lemur

A whistling duck – these guys were so cute, all of us loved them:

Whistling Duck

Cheetah (and no, we didn’t go in this enclosure):

Cheetah

East African Crowned Cranes:

East African Crowned Cranes

Cape Buffalo:

Cape Buffalo

White Rhinoceros:

White Rhinoceros

Chapman’s Zebra:

Chapman's Zebra

Not sure what these are, but they’re pretty:

On Thursday, a bunch of us went tidepooling at a really pretty little secluded beach just south of Bodega Bay. We had to walk a half-mile to get there along a poison oak-infested trail (and of course, it was harder work going back up on the way back to the car at the end of the day), but it was totally worth it. It was a great beach, and we got there about half an hour before low tide, so we had plenty of time to explore the pools, looking for invertebrates. Here are a few photos taken at Pinnacle Gulch:

Pinnacle Gulch

Sea Star (although I still think of them as Starfish):

Sea Star

My son and Kate from Bio Club:

Connor and K8

Anemone:

Anemone

Bat Star:

Bat Star

Kate and a big crab:

K8 and a Crab

Bodega Bay

Last Thursday, we took advantage of one of the last few days of summer to make a trip to the coast. I’d driven through Bodega Bay before (on our return trip from Mount St. Helens last year), but this is the first time I’d stopped and spent any time there. We had lunch in a bay-side restaurant, where we got to watch pelicans and seals and sea lions and cormorants and, yes, gulls who looked like they might go crazed and attack at any moment. 😉

Then, we went to the beach for a while, via the Bird Walk – a trail of about a mile (I’m guessing; maybe less, maybe a bit more, but probably less) which runs alongside a creek that flows into the ocean just south of the bay. It was a great day.

Doran Beach:

Beach, near Bodega Bay

Marbeled Godwit:

Day - Marbeled Godwit

The Bird Walk:

View along the Bird Walk, Bodega Bay

Doran Beach:

Beach

Breaking waves:

Breaking Waves

Ring-billed Gull:

Ring-billed Gulls

Heerman’s Gull:

Heerman's Gull

Marbeled Godwit again:

Marbeled Godwit

Parasailers:

Parasailing