Wildflowers (4-28-10)

The guy who delivers the newspaper comes by around 2:30 a.m. Sometimes I’m up and I hear the tossed paper either whack into the gate with a thud and rattle, or sail under it and slide across the smooth concrete entryway with a snake-like hiss. You can get into some pretty deep thinking — not always wacky! — in those wee hours, and the other night was no exception.

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Wildflowers (4-28-10)

 The Other Blacktails

I was surprised to see old Lepus californicus, the black-tailed jackrabbit — two, in fact — sitting at ease in the middle of the corral where people take horseback-riding lessons. The corral was nicely swept and smooth, and the rabbits were seemingly a long way from protective cover. I’d seen their scat here and there, but this was the first time in Tennessee Valley that I’d seen the rabbits

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The Other Blacktails

 NFF, Pt. 2

I’ve been thinking about changing the name of the blog to something that reflects my local orientation of late. As much as I love exploring other parts of the state, my taste for long drives has ebbed in recent weeks. My plan for this weekend was to drive down to Big Sur and then Carrizo Plain, but in the end I didn’t feel like putting in all the hours behind the wheel.

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NFF, Pt. 2

 Turkey Strut

The day’s hike sort of began and ended with turkeys. As I’ve walked down the trail so many times I’ll shake my head at the crazy normalcy of seeing wild turkeys roaming the hillsides, either alone or in pairs, or a gaggle of toms strutting in the trail while a couple of shy hens lightly chirp and busily forage and hardly seem to notice all the attention being directed their way.

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Turkey Strut

 Urban Coyote

It has seemed during last few years that everyone but me has seen a coyote in San Francisco. There’s a charming little booklet about a coyote at Twin Peaks, and there’s even a movie about coyotes in the city! Thankfully, the drought is finally over. I drove to Glen Park this morning to see what the nesting Great Horned Owls were up to and almost immediately caught a glimpse of an animal

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Urban Coyote

 Mileage Plus

Too bad there isn’t a club that gives benefits for going on 1,700-mile photo safaris.  I know, I know — don’t even ask me how I drove so many miles in so few days!  I wanted to stay out a couple more days, but I didn’t exactly get the “spring-like” conditions I’d hoped for.  In fact, not once on this trip did I don a pair of short pants. My first stop was the Salton Sea State Recreation Area

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Mileage Plus

 January Slideshow

One of the best features of Flickr is the slideshow function. It’s an effortless way to view a set of someone’s photos in their original size instead of the shrunken 500-pixel view. I’ve been creating sets based on months of the year because my goal is to eventually have photos from all over the state, at all times of the year, and viewing the monthly set as a slideshow is a good way to see

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January Slideshow

 Winter Bobcat

I’d given up and was on my way out, already thinking about someplace to go look for mushrooms to photograph, when I spotted the bobcat sitting near the edge of the meadow. There was no way to make a direct approach without having to ford a rushing stream, so I circled around an unfamiliar area to try my luck. Stepping carefully among fallen eucalyptus twigs to keep quiet, I approached the edge

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Winter Bobcat

 Free Seminar with Director & Writer of Captain Abu Raed!

Amin Matalqa, Director & Writer of Captain Abu Raed Join us on Thursday, February 11 at the IUPUI Campus Center for a FREE seminar with Amin Matalqa, Director and Writer of 2008 Heartland Film Festival Grand Prize winning film, Captain Abu Raed .

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Free Seminar with Director & Writer of Captain Abu Raed!

 A Shine of Rainbows – in Theaters March 26

Tomas is a young boy that is bullied and unhappy at an orphanage. He is suddenly and mysteriously adopted by a childless couple, who live simply and modestly on a very remote Irish island. The mother, although in ill health, is a woman of astounding positive energy and beauty and sets herself to healing the mental and physical scars of the boy’s unfortunate upbringing.

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A Shine of Rainbows – in Theaters March 26

 The Bobcat of Happiness

Coming down out of the hills this afternoon I was asked by a man and woman sitting on a park bench if they could see a picture of the bobcat I’d been photographing. I don’t normally view my pictures on the tiny screen on the back of my camera, but I would have been embarrassed to be unable to figure out how to do it for the couple. I turned on the camera and got the last image to appear.

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The Bobcat of Happiness

 Vernal Pools by David Hunter

Vernal Sunrise NEW Originally uploaded by dvdhntr I recently tried to get a California Nature Photography blog going, but it never really came together as I’d envisioned. I’m not sure this is going to work, either, but let’s take a crack at it. What I want to do here is showcase California natural history photo essays

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Vernal Pools by David Hunter

 A Walk In The Park

I spotted the Marsh Hawk on a fence post at the other end of the parking lot before I’d even pulled into my space and turned off the engine. A couple of ravens were keeping an eye on him from telephone wires overhead, but he paid them no mind as he watched for prey in the adjacent marsh

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A Walk In The Park

 More Fun In The Fog

Despite passing very close to my Jeep, the coyote didn’t even flick an ear when I clicked the shutter. He just kept on moving north at an easy walk, pausing now and then to check out a sound of possible prey in the long grass.

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More Fun In The Fog

 Bobcat Country

While Pam and I were hanging out with cat #1 and sharing the sighting with passers-by, some of whom had never seen a bobcat before, we got wind of a second bobcat maybe 50 yards up the trail. Some days the closest thing you see to a bobcat is a track in the mud or a scat in the trail

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Bobcat Country

 Gift of Bobcats

A visitor from Chicago looked at the Marin Headlands out the car window. “Look at all that wasted space!” she said. If not for the work of some very persistent people, much if not all of that “wasted” space would have been “developed” by now.

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Gift of Bobcats

 Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

The seals ( Phoca vitulina ) were off-limits when I first arrived. A docent clad in a yellow slicker against intermittent rain squalls shouted at a couple of people who tried to get past the roped-off line that separated the beasts from the seals

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Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

 Tiny Tidepoolers

As I wandered over the slick granodiorite at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve I had my eyes peeled for nudibranchs, but all I found in the wee interstices of reef and wrack were the usual suspects — hermit crabs, sculpins, and shrimp. Shrimp, you say? I checked my photo library and found no shrimp at all

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Tiny Tidepoolers

 Mushroom Hunting

I started seeing mushrooms long before I got to my destination of Cataract Creek. I hadn’t been planning to photograph mushrooms and hadn’t brought any wax paper bags to collect them in. Although I had a pretty good idea what most of them were, I’d have been much better off with specimens to look up at home

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Mushroom Hunting

 Limits of Focus Stacking

One of the mushrooms I wanted to photograph while I was hiking through the dripping woods from the bottom of the Cataract Trail on the north side of Mt. Tam was the little one-inch-tall orange guy (small but deadly since it harbors amanita toxins) in these pictures.

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Limits of Focus Stacking