New software is allowing me to track the countries where this blog’s readers are located, and as was noted in a Jan. 13 posting, people in 23 countries found their way here in the first two weeks after the tracking began.

In the two weeks since then, readers in an additional 24 countries visited this site. They came from: Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Guatemala, Ireland, Israel, Kenya, Latvia, Morocco, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Syria, and Thailand.

Of course, some visitors didn’t stick around long, but some did. The average visit lasts more than two minutes and 20 seconds. Among the foreign readers who first visited this site in the past two weeks, those who spent significant time reading it came from Belgium, China (Shanghai), Guatemala, Morocco, and Thailand.

Finding the door open, three young raccoons consider exploring my kitchen but think better of it when they hear, “Scat.” A Sept. 16 posting on raccoon scat continues to bring visitors to this blog.

What interests visitors? There are lots of ways to find this blog, and Google is obviously an important one. Nor is it surprising that the same Google Analytics software that can track readers’ cities and countries can also track what words people Googled to reach this blog. The top 10 “keywords,” it turns out, were: raccoon scat, dave mitchell the light point reyes, dave mitchell editor, west marin sheriff’s citizen, sparselysageadtimely.com, tony ragona reyes, bolinas clinic, dave mitchell blog, tomales bay association ken fox president, “didi thompson.”

Didi Thompson is my neighbor and has been mentioned in postings. Tony Ragona, a Point Reyes Station innkeeper, is a friend and has also been mentioned. The rest are fairly self explanatory although “west marin sheriff’s citizen” is a bit confused.

But it is downright bizarre that “raccoon scat” tops the list of terms that people around the world Googled last month to end up at this blog with its Sept. 16 posting, Telling the Raccoon ‘Scat.’ The posting discusses the unsightliness of some raccoons’ elevated latrines and the danger of raccoon excrement’s containing eggs of the parasite Baylisascaris procyonis.

The International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors has reprinted the posting, and I suppose that might explain some interest in the original. In any case, this blog’s Sept. 16 entry has now risen to fifth place in Google’s compendium of 113,000 “raccoon scat” postings. Try Googling the term. You’ll see for yourself.

Bemused by all this, I sent Tony an email congratulating him on ranking almost as high as “raccoon scat” and higher than “dave mitchell blog” in drawing people to this site. “Thanks,” he wrote back, “I guess.”

The “wildland/urban interface.” One afternoon last week I took care of Sebastian, a 15-year-old Havanese that belongs to Linda Petersen of Inverness. At his age, Sebastian is deaf and legally blind, so when the dog wandered over to this deer, he didn’t see her, and the doe immediately realized he was no threat.

In directing my neighbors and me to make our properties safe from wildfires,  Marin County Fire Chief Ken Massucco last September wrote us that we live in a designated “wildland/urban-interface area.” Despite that being firefighter jargon, the “interface” could as easily describe our interactions with wildlife as our risk of wildfires.

I’ve found it striking how much more wildlife I’m seeing around my property now that I’m retired and at home more. Just by staying alert, I’ve been able to shoot photos for this blog of a coyote and a bobcat, deer and raccoons, foxes and possums, snakes and salamanders, frogs and roof rats. All this wildlife has no doubt been around my home for 30 years, but until three years ago when I stopped editing The Point Reyes Light, I was too busy to see it.

And there’s another noteworthy difference between running a newspaper office and maintaining a blog from home. Once a newspaper article is in print, you can’t change it. I can remember times when I lamented this as a curse; now, however, I think it might have actually been a blessing.

Upgraded WordPress software now counts how many changes I make to a posting after I first put it online. The changes are usually very small, rearranging a sentence or substituting one word for another, but they can add up. A few days after last week’s posting went online, I became curious how many times I’d taken it down and changed it, so I checked: 107 times!

Add this attention to detail to humanity’s natural concern with raccoon scat, and you can see why SparselySageAndTimely.com has caught the attention of some serious readers around the globe: from Bangalore, India, and Palmerton North, New Zealand, to Sandefjord, Norway, and Riga, Latvia.

For nearly 500 West Marin residents watching TV inside Toby’s Feed Barn this morning, the inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama carried the excitement of Prince Charles’ visit, mankind’s landing on the moon, and Western Weekend all happening at once.

Residents sat around a screen on which was projected CNN’s coverage of the ceremonies.

Other residents stood around those residents, and still more sat on piles of seed sacks or on towering stacks of hay bales.

Although the 2000 census found that whites account for 89 percent and Latinos for 10 percent of West Marin’s population, residents of all races and ages were on hand to witness together the swearing in of the first black president in US history.

Some adults brought children as young as toddlers to this historic celebration. Others brought dogs. However, no one that I saw brought both.

In November’s presidential election, President Obama had carried West Marin with 86 percent of the vote, and a number of people today celebrated the fact that bigotry can no longer control nationwide election results. Indeed, as soon as President Obama finished taking the oath of office, the woman standing in front of me began shaking hands with everyone around her, saying to each, “Congratulations, my fellow American.”

The center of attention at Toby’s was a projection screen intriguingly located under pallets piled with sacks of seed and fertilizer, and in front of a wall festooned with bunting, the Stars and Stripes, and President Obama’s call to action.

Feed Barn proprietor Chris Giacomini (foreground) and other celebrants clap during President Obama’s inaugural address.

Watching televised coverage of history being made.

Tuesday’s schedule of inaugural celebrations around Tomales Bay began with a sunrise swim at Chicken Ranch Beach in Inverness. I’m as enthusiastic about our 44th president as the next West Marin resident, but I wasn’t about to brave the cold or the hour.

Inverness tree trimmer Tom Kent, who did go, told me approximately 75 people were on hand, and others told me that most of those got in the water, including one young woman who braved the the chilly bay au naturel. Did Tom take a dip in the bay too? “I borrowed a wetsuit,” he replied. “It was the first time I’d ever worn one. Boy, do they take a long time to get into!”

President Barack Obama takes the oath of office. One hand is on a bible (held by First Lady Michelle Obama) that Abraham Lincoln used for his 1861 inauguration.

Today’s events are being hosted by: Point Reyes Books, Toby’s Feed Barn, Mainstreet Moms, The Dance Palace, and Point Reyes Nation. A breakfast including pastries, orange juice, coffee and tea was provided for the crowd that squeezed into Toby’s Feed Barn.

From 6 to 10 p.m., an inaugural ball will be held in the Dance Palace, $10 (“West Marin formal”). Soup will be provided (“bring your own beverages and bowl”).

First a recap of 2008’s headline news: It’s been a good year for double-entendres in headlines, as evidenced by samples published in each issue of The Columbia Journalism Review. “Cash reward to be offered whenever a cop is shot,” announced a headline in the March 3 edition of the Newark, New Jersey, Star Ledger. Or “15 pit bulls rescued; 2 arrested,” the White Plains, New York, Journal News, March 6.

I myself happened upon a couple of headlines with unintended double meanings and sent one of them to CJR, which published it: “Ex-cop gets 50 days in stolen golf clubs case.” The San Francisco Chronicle, June, 6. Although the meaning is obvious today, a few decades from now the most mysterious of the bunch will probably be a Dec. 14 headline I read in Dubai’s gulfnews.com: “Reporter throws shoes at Bush in Iraq.”

And while I’ve been thinking globally, I’ve also been trying to act locally. Here are photographs I shot this week to record the natural Zeitgeist of Point Reyes Station during the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Four blacktail deer graze in the early light on Dec. 26 (or Boxing Day, as my relatives in Canada call the day after Christmas).

Before long, four wild turkeys showed up in my pasture and proceeded to chase each other in circles. I never could figure out who was chasing whom.

As the sun rose higher in the sky on Boxing Day, a buzzard circled several times just off my deck. Here the bird’s proximity to the sun results in an unexpected lens flare. Boxing Day by tradition is an occasion for giving gifts to service workers.

The sun setting on 2008. Inverness Ridge as seen Monday. Happy New Year, one and all.

Not long after midnight this morning, I was sitting by my woodstove looking into the flames when I heard a coyote howling in the neighboring horse pasture (right), which is owned by the Giacomini family.

The howls consisted of wails followed by a series of yips, and the coyote sounded so near I went out on my deck to listen more closely. When the coyote howled again, another coyote on the Point Reyes Mesa answered. Before the answering howl ended, however, the first coyote resumed its howling.

After a couple more rounds of wails and yipping, the two stopped only to have the silence broken by the distant howl of a third coyote. This one sounded as if it were somewhere near the Red Barn, but it was too far away for me to be certain. Nonetheless, the distant howl immediately drew more howling from the first coyote.

Soon all three coyotes were howling at once. They finally stopped, but I stayed outside, straining to hear more in the blackness of a moonless midnight.

For a minute or two all was quiet, but then a fourth coyote started howling. The howl was so faint I could barely hear it, but it seemed to be coming from the vicinity of West Marin School. Immediately the other three resumed their howling, creating a coyote cacophony on the northern end of Point Reyes Station.

I photographed this coyote at the top of my driveway three months ago.

Many West Marin residents have heard a coyote chorus at one time or another, and unless they were sheep ranchers, most of them probably enjoyed it. Of course, one can hardly begrudge sheep ranchers their resentment of coyotes.

After a 40-year absence, coyotes returned to northern Marin and southern Sonoma counties 25 years ago as a result of the federal government’s ordering ranchers to stop poisoning them. In the years since then, depredation by coyotes has put an end to well over half the sheep ranching here.

In my case, however, the howling was a happy reminder that here in the small towns of West Marin, the Old West lives on. The coyotes howl, and the wind blows free.

Despite all the coyotes in the area, 12 blacktail deer, including this adult buck which I photographed today, have been spending time in my pasture all week.

“When hunting larger prey like deer, coyotes hunt in packs,” notes NatureWorks, a website of New Hampshire Public Television. “One or more coyote will chase the deer while the others wait, then the next group will pick up the chase. Working in teams like this, the coyote can tire the deer out, making it easier to kill.”

It happens that there are a number of fresh badger burrows in the horse pasture where the first coyote did its howling, so I was fascinated to read on NatureWorks, “Coyotes also often follow badgers and catch prey that pop out of burrows the badger is digging.”

Relying on badgers to flush field mice and gophers for them! Amazing! Those coyotes really are wiley.

I was preparing to fix breakfast about 11 a.m. today when I looked out the kitchen window and saw a bobcat hunting just outside.

Two weeks ago, as was reported here, I had been thrilled to see and photograph a bobcat hunting near a car parked at my house. This time, the bobcat was even closer.

To photograph it, I slid open the kitchen window as quietly as I could, freezing motionless whenever the bobcat heard a noise and looked up.
The cat was hunting gophers, and I while I watched, it pounced and caught one. With the gopher dangling from its mouth, the bobcat then ran uphill to eat its meal under a clump of coyote brush. Later today, I twice again spotted the bobcat nearby.

Three or four mornings ago, I had likewise looked out a kitchen window and spotted a mottled cat (at left) with a bobbed tail hunting near my woodpile.

Before I got too excited, however, I used my binoculars to inspect it more thoroughly. Rats! It was just a big housecat with a bobbed tail.

Soon the cat walked over to my woodpile and sat at the edge of the tarpaulin that covers it.

While all this was going on, I took a couple of photos just to illustrate the difference between a real bobcat, Lynx rufus californicus, and a faux bobcat, Felis catus.

As can be seen in the photos, the easiest way to tell them apart is that real bobcats don’t wear pet collars.

Here’s hoping you had a happy US Thanksgiving this past fourth Thursday of November. My family in Canada celebrated that country’s Thanksgiving on Oct. 13; it’s the second Monday of October up north where the harvest comes earlier. As for my family down south in Guatemala, that long-suffering country gets no Turkey Day at all.

In Point Reyes Station, approximately 225 guests and 25 volunteers took part in the West Marin Community Thanksgiving Dinner. For the second year, the feast was held in the Dance Palace, with diners filling the main hall and most of the church space.

West Marin Community Resource Center organized the event, but numerous groups ranging from the Inverness Garden Club to the Marin County Fire Department helped with preparations. Here volunteers served a line that stretched around the room.

All fall I’ve been seeing wild turkeys along West Marin’s roads, but I hadn’t spotted any on my own property until this flock of eight hens showed up appropriately enough on the eve of Thanksgiving. Clucking contentedly, they dug small holes in my pasture before moving on.

Wild turkeys, of course, are not native to West Marin. Working with the California Department of Fish & Game, a hunting club in 1988 introduced the wild turkeys on Loma Alta Ridge, which overlooks the San Geronimo Valley. The original flock of 11 hens and three toms all came from a population that Fish & Game had established in the Napa Valley during the 1950s.

There’s not much turkey hunting in West Marin these days except by Point Reyes National Seashore staff trying to exterminate them where it can. On private lands, however, the turkeys can usually find a haven.

While on my deck enjoying the sun around 2 p.m. Saturday, I looked down and spotted something moving in the grass near the cars parked at the foot of my front steps.

After first using a pair of binoculars to confirm that the animal was a bobcat and not just a large housecat, I quickly got out my camera.

I’ve seen a bobcat hunting around my cabin before, and even shot a photo of it, but this was my first chance to photograph one at fairly close range. That was a thrill.

Although rabbit and hare are the primary fare for bobcats in other parts of the country, this member of the lynx genus also hunts small rodents, as well as insects, and even deer in some regions. Their numbers are fairly stable in most of the United States despite heavy hunting in some places.

The subspecies of bobcat common to this region is the Lynx rufus Californicus. The adult male averages three feet in length, including a 4- to 7-inch bobbed tail, and is about 15 inches tall at the shoulder.

In Point Reyes Station, which President-elect Barack Obama carried with 86.1 percent of the vote, brown hills quickly turned to green after the election.

It’s time for another installment in this blog’s occasional series Quotes Worth Saving, which, in fact, is the label on the file in which I save them. Here are a few gleaned from the press during the past three years.

SWANSEA WALES  When officials [via email] asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign [“No entry for heavy-goods vehicles. Residential site only.”], they thought the reply was what they needed.

Unfortunately, the email response [Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i’w gyfieithu.] to Swansea council said in Welsh, “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.” So that was what went up under the English version, which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket. “When they’re proofing signs, they should really use someone who speaks Welsh,” said journalist Dylan Iorwerth. BBC, Oct. 31, 2008

All official roadsigns in Wales must be bilingual, and this is hardly the first time confusion has occurred in translations:

VALE OF GLAMORGAN, WALES  Cyclists were left confused by a bilingual roadsign telling them they had problems with an inflamed bladder. The “Cyclists Dismount” sign between Penarth and Cardiff became”llid y bledren dymchwelyd” in  Welsh, literally “Bladder Inflammation Upset” The Vale of Glamorgan Council said new signs were being made. “It is possible that an online translation led to confusion between cyclists and cystitis.” BBC, Aug. 15, 2006

And there are times when despite everything being clearly written, the reader is left wondering, “What the heck was really going on?”

FRESNO  Fresno County authorities have arrested a man they say broke into the home of two farmworkers, rubbed one with spices, and whacked the other with a sausage before fleeing. The suspect, 22-year-old Antonio Vasquez of Fresno, was found hiding in a nearby field wearing only a T-shirt, boxer shorts, and socks.

The victims told deputies they awoke Saturday morning to the stranger applying spices to one of them and striking the other with an 8-inch sausage. Money allegedly stolen in the burglary was recovered. The sausage was tossed away by the fleeing suspect and eaten by a dog. Associated Press, Sept. 8, 2008

She’s no paparazzi, but San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik features a “Public Eavesdropping” item in each column. Six weeks after Italy’s most-beloved opera singer died last year, Garchik quoted a tourist in Paris remarking, “I never understood why Pavarotti was chasing Princess Diana.” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 19, 2007

West Marin provides wintering grounds for a variety of migrating birds, and one of the first to arrive each fall is the Golden-crowned sparrow.

This one showed up on the railing of my deck a couple weeks ago. Besides having a yellow stripe down the middle of its head, the Golden-crowned sparrow has a distinctive, three-note song. The best description I’ve heard of it comes from horsewoman Connie Berto: “Three Blind Mice sung in a minor key.”

Golden-crowned sparrows’ summer breeding grounds are in Alaska and British Columbia. The birds migrate south to Vancouver Island and the West Coast of the United States each winter.

Illegal migrants? I spotted these Mute swans a week ago on La Laguna, the small lake along Chileno Valley Road near Laguna School. These are part of a larger flock that included a few Trumpeter swans. Despite Mute swans’ beauty, Oregon and Washington, as well as some Midwestern and East Coast states, have begun trying to kill them off. It’s the US Interior Department’s white-deer and Drakes Bay-oyster scandals all over again: nativism masquerading as science.

As an organization called Save Our Swans notes, “In 2004 a nationwide program in the United States was announced that would reduce Mute swan populations by 85 percent, with the remaining swans to be pinioned, neutered and placed in parks. This caused an outrage by citizens and was fought in court….”

The Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service claims that Mute swans, which are smaller than Trumpeter swans, are non-native and eating up all the “native” swans’ food (mostly water plants, such as algae). But there’s no more evidence for this than there was for the Point Reyes National Seashore’s claim that white deer were out-competing blacktail deer for the park’s abundant forage.

Despite the nationwide policy of Fish and Wildlife, “the Mute Swan is protected in some states by state statute, for example, in Connecticut,” Save Our Swans reports. “Since swans eat algae, they can be very valuable in shallow bay areas, in rivers and ponds.”
Migrant swans in Chileno Valley, which was named after another group of migrants, Chilean ranchworkers.

Mute swans, moreover, are neither mute nor non-native. Save Our Swans explains that Mute swans are “circumboreal.” That is, they migrate around the far north, “including the Russian Maritimes and Kamchatka, a major staging area for millions of birds on migration to the American continent, a short distance away.”

Given their migration route, it is hardly surprising that cold weather sometimes forces migrating swans south to the Atlantic states, to the Upper Midwest, and on the West Coast as far south as California. Mute swans have been reported for centuries in what is now the United States. A 1585 scientific expedition on behalf of Sir Walter Raleigh brought back to England a detailed drawing of a Mute swan on the Atlantic shore.

In short, the Mute swan is a primarily Eurasian bird whose migration routes have always resulted in some members of the species living in the United States, where the Department of the Interior now wants to kill them off.

Meanwhile, “Trumpeter swans, native birds, have been ‘placed’ by wildlife management agencies — often in areas in which they never bred historically — to create a ‘trophy’ species for sportsmen,” Save Our Swans reports. “There has already been a trial hunting season on Trumpeter swans in the Pacific Flyway and suggested programs to expand the [current] program coast to coast.”

Like Tchaikovsky, I’ve always thought of killing swans as brutally misguided. If you agree, please check the Save Our Swans website to see how you can help stop this government-sponsored barbarity.

Just what does that gull see?

One of the odder results of Senator John McCain’s choice for a vice presidential running mate is that Americans are learning about a previously obscure but medically recognized brain disorder. The disorder, which can lead to clinical anxiety, causes sufferers to see things after they’re no longer there.

Ironically, the name of the brain disorder is Palinopsia. This is true. “You could look it up,” to quote James Thurber. The all-too-apt coincidence of names was first brought to public attention in online commentaries by Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker and Michael Daly of The New York Daily News.

For defense, the gopher snake frequently pretends to be a rattlesnake.

Snake bitten after Republicans, as well as Democrats, accused him and running mate Sarah Palin of rabble rousing that could lead to violence, Senator McCain is now trying to defuse his supporters’ fury toward opponent Barack Obama.

When a woman at a rally in Minnesota last Friday told McCain she didn’t trust Senator Obama because “he’s an Arab,” McCain responded, “No, ma’am, he’s a decent family man.”

It’s true that Obama is not Arabic. But since when are being Arabic and being “a decent family man” mutually exclusive? (Editor’s note: Less than an hour after this posting went online, Jon Stewart raised the same question on the Daily Show. In short, SparselySageAndTimely.com was out in front of the Daily Show on this issue — at least in the Pacific time zone.)

Western fence lizards come in many colors, sometimes looking almost red on their backs although males are typically blue on their bellies.

Another irony. Despite bogus claims about Senator Obama’s ancestry, if you go back enough generations, Obama through his mother is related to George Bush (11th cousins), Dick Cheney (9th cousins), two signers of the Declaration of Independence (Richard Henry Lee and his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee), a 19th century US Supreme Court justice (Edward Douglass White), and numerous other American statesmen.

To improve the public’s poor opinion of them, President Bush and Vice President Cheney may want to start stressing that they’re related to the much-more-popular senator from Illinois.