It seems that a fair number of coyotes are conducting their mating-season romances around Point Reyes Station this year. In the past three weeks, I’ve heard them howling almost every night right outside my cabin, typically with another coyote howling back. (This one along Limantour Road near the Sky Trailhead is the third coyote my houseguest Linda Petersen has recently seen and the second she has photographed.)
For some people, the influx of coyotes is bad news. Sheepmen, of course, hate the critters, and Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park three weeks ago wrote this blog that people had seen two coyotes grab a chicken in her neighborhood. Tony Ragona, owner of Windsong Cottage B&B on the north edge of Point Reyes Station, last week told me that the coyotes have taken to howling so loud and long outside his home that they sometimes keep him awake. When it goes on too long, Tony said, he shines a flashlight on them so they leave.
Paradoxically, the influx of coyotes is good news for birds that roost in scrub brush. Biologist Jules Evens of Point Reyes Station told me last week that when coyotes move in, the number of mesopredators goes down. By mesopredators, Jules said, he was referring locally to raccoons, opossums, skunks, and foxes. He might have added feral cats. In any case, they are all smaller predators that eat birds or birds’ eggs.
So what’s the connection with coyotes? Coyotes eat fox cubs, and they compete with foxes and cats for field rodents. In the main, however, coyotes reduce the number of mesopredators merely by their presence, Jules said. Foxes, raccoons, opossums, skunks etc. don’t like to be around coyotes and stay away from their territory.
Raccoons perform a pas de deux outside my dining room.
When the coyotes first started howling nightly three weeks ago, this hill’s performing raccoons stopped touring for a couple of days. By now, their traveling troupe has resumed making its rounds, but showtime is earlier in the evening, well before the coyotes start howling.
On more than a few mornings recently, there have been numerous freshly dug holes in my pasture. They are usually only two and three inches wide through grass and a short ways into the soil. Unable to figure out what critter was causing them, I asked Jules, who immediately knew the answer: “Wild turkeys.”
That made sense. This hill has recently seen an influx of not only coyotes but also wild turkeys. Notice the holes in the grass downhill from this flock. I’ve had 25 turkeys in my pasture at a time, and neighbor Carol Horick last week spotted more than 50 outside her home.
Another neighbor, George Stamoulis, today told me that in the last day or two, he had seen the first wild turkeys on his property.
But the sighting that George really relished was of a bobcat hunting outside his window last week. The bobcat soon tired of hunting, George said, and it lay down to take a nap, spending altogether an hour or more just outside his door.
Last week I read in The West Marin Citizen that at this time of year, female blacktail deer form “clans” while the males are “solitary.” Apparently, the word hasn’t reached this buck yet because in recent weeks, he’s been grazing with the fawns and females on my property. Or maybe he considers himself above the law of nature.
The power of the word: A friend in Point Reyes Station called me Friday afternoon to ask if I’d heard the word going ’round town that there’d be striptease at the Old Western Saloon that night
Trinka Marris of Inverness Park (standing beside the state senator) heads the Save the White Deer campaign, and she invited many of us who also oppose the Point Reyes National Seashore’s slaughter of fallow and axis deer to come to her house last Saturday for a party to meet Migden.
While she clearly didn’t mind being photographed, Migden (at left) said news articles too often make her look bad by getting her comments wrong or presenting them out of context. Whether press reports on Migden have been right or wrong, it is perfectly understandable why the state senator has been uncomfortable with them.
“‘Was she this arrogant in San Francisco?’ Gambastiani asked. To be honest, yes. Migden has long been known as hell on high heels. The New York native cut her teeth in the-rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco politics, then spent eight years as one of the most-aggressive liberal legislators in the state.”
After the collision, Migden told CBS 5 she had been diagnosed with leukemia 10 years ago and that her daily medication may have been to blame for her bad driving. I personally was certainly sorry to learn about the state senator’s leukemia, but would her medicine really cause her to drive 80 mph in traffic while intermittently reading and talking on the phone? After all, Migden was a leader of the movement in the Legislature to outlaw the use of cell phones while driving. How easily does one forget?
Most retail merchants in Point Reyes Station took part and as always placed luminaria in front of their businesses.
Playing her guitar in front of the Bank of Petaluma, singer Harmony Grisman of Inverness led caroling at the West Marin Senior Services tree-lighting ceremony.
Bolinas residents watch private companies skim oil offshore after being told by sheriff’s deputies that they themselves were prohibited from cleaning up bunker oil that had washed up on the town’s beach. Some townspeople, however, concluded saving wildlife was more important than obeying a deputy.
Coast Guard Rear Admiral Craig Bone told the House subcommittee the cleanup has “exceeded expectations” and is “one of the most successful cleanups I’ve ever experienced.”
Here to join me in wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving are a flock of wild turkeys, which I spotted this afternoon behind my pine tree as they strutted near the fence of neighbors Dan and Mary Huntsman.