Loma Prieta Hike Part 3 - Wildlife and wonderful plants and wandering thoughts

As we walked an experienced young tracker was paying less attention to the plants than to footprints and scat at the trailside. Not so pretty as a flower but fascinating to help build up a picture of life in the wild.

Maybe I should have opened with a prettier picture.... But this was as interesting as any flower. Fox maybe? There were fox-like prints nearby, according to the tracker on the hike.

Squint to see the spotted skunk foot print, two small round pads behind and five toes with claw mark in front of each.

She recommended a book... Mammal Tracks and Sign, by Mark Elbroch. Oh my - so much to learn!

Later that day I had my own experience of "tracking" -- it helped me figure out that a raccoon had been in the cottage! Not only did he (or she) make a mess of the dog kibble we keep in there, but she (or he) also left a little hand-shaped footprint, just inside the dog door we forgot to close up!

There's a reason they call raccoons bandits - and it isn't just their mask!

I'm also trying to learn about birds as well as plants, so on the hike, I was trying to stay close to our leader Randy Morgan, to benefit from his observations along the way. Randy is a great birder. I told him about one bird I've been trying to ID:

Me: It is way h,igh in the trees and
Randy: Oh, and it sounds like this -- he whistled the three note song - that's an olive-sided flycatcher.
Me: (mouth agape) Yes! You're right.

He liked my observation that it sounds like a whistled version of a California quail's call (commonly rendered by the word Chicago). I didn't even get to my astute observations that it seemed to have a band of white down the front and a large-ish head. Well here's a photo so you can see the bird itself, from the All About Birds page:

Olive-sided flycatcher

We also saw a flash of a blue grey gnatcatcher. Now I don't remember the small voice it had. But fortunately you can get a good look and listen on it's All About Birds page.

Another very cool non-plant event on the trip was a whiptail lizard crossing the trail. It looked to be at least 12 inches long. Here's a picture from CaliforniaHerps:

Whiptail lizard (not sure if it's the coastal species or not)

She stopped for quite a good long time so we could all get a good look. I think they pay them extra for that. I didn't want to risk frightening him off so I didn't raise my camera for a shot. I read the following interesting fact in an article (which may not be there now, but I read it in a Scientific American article by Katherine Harmon):

Since the 1960s scientists have known that some species of whiptail lizards need a male even less than a fish needs a bicycle. These all-lady lizard species (of the Aspidoscelis genus) from Mexico and the U.S. Southwest manage to produce well-bred offspring without the aid of male fertilization.

Wow!

Here are some other photos from that day...

Oh, I would also like to mention that Dylan Neubauer was along on this trip and helped me with a lot of IDs and also gave me some tips for identifying different local oaks, which I might write about another time. A former student of Randy's, she has risen to prominence in Santa Cruz County as a botanist par excellence, and, with Randy, has been updating the county's checklist, An Annotated Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Santa Cruz County, California. So locals, don't buy a copy now -- wait for the updated version, out soon!

Wow! Clematis lasiantha, chaparral clematis

Looking um. west? we saw Mount Umunhum.

Interestingly, there is a plan to convert the former military installation on top of Mount Umunhum into an open space preserve - and some controversy about whether to keep the cube-shaped radar tower on top (just visible on the flat peak at the right side) or remove it. (See this page for more.) My initial gut feeling is to keep it as a historical monument. I visited my sister who lived in South San Jose in the late 60s-early 70s. I remember seeing the radar scanner going around on top of this box. I found it terrifying that they were actively "defending" against the Soviet threat. And yet to my bafflement, people in California would ask me if I felt afraid living in the U.K., being so close to Russia and all!

But I probably am swinging towards the other view - remove that temporary abomination on the land and return it to its native state. Sort of native state. There is no "returning" really. The past is a foreign country as 'tis said.