A guineafowl surprised motorists and pedestrians late Sunday afternoon by wandering around the south end of Point Reyes Station’s main street. When I first spotted the Helmeted guineafowl, it was pecking on the sidewalk and in the grass between the Coastal Marin Real Estate and West Marin Medical Center buildings.

The bird subsequently stopped traffic by standing on the main street for a while. It later paused to reconnoiter while in the middle of the intersection in front of Whale of a Deli. Intrigued by the non-native species, Highway 1 motorists patiently waited until the guineafowl decided which way to go next. One merchant tried to herd it (flock it?) off the roadway but was only temporarily successful.

Guineafowl “eat lice, worms, ants, spiders, weeds, ticks etc.,” Wikipedia notes, so having one roaming around town was probably all to the good.

The partridge-like bird is native to Africa, so I contacted Jack Long, who raises exotic fowl at Creekside Birds along the levee road not far away. From my photo, Jack was able to confirm the bird is indeed a guineafowl but said it does not belong to him. Jack noted I was the second person to ask whether it was his bird but added that he’d stopped raising guineafowl long ago because they’re so noisy (his birdcages are next to his house). Jack told me he doesn’t know of anyone in town now raising guineafowl.

Update as of Tuesday: Neighbor George Stamoulis told me yesterday that he’d just seen a guineafowl at Millerton Point. Neighbor Skip Shannon, a hunter and field-trial competitor, added that hunters sometimes use guineafowl in training their dogs although he doesn’t. And biologist Russell Ridge of Inverness Ridge (“no relation”) told me that anyone who hunts guineafowl better like dark meat.

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.

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.

There are many lessons to be learned from Nov. 7’s 58,000-gallon oil spill in San Francisco Bay. The spill occurred when the container-cargo ship Cosco Busan struck the fender of a Bay Bridge tower, tearing a 100-foot-long gash in its hull.

By now oil from the spill has drifted out the Golden Gate and traveled as far up the coast as Point Reyes and as far down the coast as Montara Beach in San Mateo County. Near Point Reyes, Drake’s Bay Oyster Company has had to stop harvesting and has said it could go out of business.

This week The San Francisco Chronicle reported that as of Monday approximately 2,150 seabirds had been found dead or had died at rescue centers, leading ornithologists to believe the real death toll is closer to 12,500 birds.

Ornithologists now warn that patches of bunker oil can be expected to wash up on coastal beaches for months to come. The toll on birds could get significantly worse, they note, because so many migratory birds winter here. Citing a lack of “resources,” federal and state scientists on Wednesday said they have already given up on trying to save roughly 250 oiled birds now dying on the Farallon Islands.

Whose interests were served when a National Park Service ranger stopped a Muir Beach resident from cleaning oil globs off the town’s beach: nature’s, the resident’s, the Park Service’s, or this government-hired cleanup company’s? (Photo by Gustav Adam)

For West Marin residents, the spill provided fresh evidence of the need to shake up the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service as soon as President Bush leaves office. From the Point Reyes National Seashore, to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area to Yosemite National Park, Pacific West Region law-enforcement rangers have in recent years become notorious for bullying and otherwise abusing well-intentioned members of the public.

The Marin Independent Journal two weeks ago quoted Muir Beach resident Sigward Moser as saying that on Nov. 9, he was threatened with a Taser gun, forced to the ground and handcuffed by a National Park Service ranger for refusing to stop cleaning up the oily beach beneath his home.

Moser, a 45-year-old communications consultant, said he was forced to sprawl handcuffed on the wet sand for an hour before he was released and given two misdemeanor citations, one for entering an emergency area and another for refusing a “lawful” order [to stop his volunteer work]. “It was pretty wet and uncomfortable,” he said.”

Wearing protective gloves, Moser, a member of the Muir Beach Disaster Council, and a group of novice Buddhist monks from the Zen Center had already removed 3.5 tons of oil globs from the beach when he was arrested.

Why didn’t the ranger want Moser there? The federal government, as usual, was paying private corporations to do public work, and volunteers by the thousands were turned away from Bay Area beaches. Public safety was a concern but one that was grossly overblown.

Volunteers were at first told they would need 40 hours of training before they would be allowed to help. Eventually, the amount of training required for most volunteers around the Bay Area was reduced to four hours, but many volunteers were then told to go home and wait to see if they’d be needed in a month.

Numerous townspeople ignored deputies’ orders and proceeded to clean large amounts of oil off Bolinas Beach. Unlike National Park Service law enforcement, sheriff’s deputies declined to arrest or manhandle good Samaritans and let them do their work. Here Mark Butler dumps a bag of rags used to sop up oil into a truck owned by Nidal Khalili of Bolinas (left) and his partner Joy Conway. Khalili and Conway planned to take the bags to a staging area in Stinson Beach. Coming off the beach at right is Walter Hoffman, who had just spent hours cleaning oil off sand and rocks.

Marin County officials in their perniciously precious way at first resisted the shortened training program. A sheriff’s spokesman told The Independent Journal there was concern within his office as to whether “a four-hour training program [is] enough to ensure public safety.”

Come on now! The main risks from bunker oil to volunteers on the beach are rashes (if they get it on their skin) and nausea (if they eat it). Casual contact is virtually never fatal, which is why many oily seabirds survive if they’re cleaned. In fact, volunteers have been told that everyday Dawn dish soap is good for removing oil from both birds and one’s own skin. A West Marin plumber, who has worked with chemicals far more dangerous than bunker oil, grumbled this week, “Twenty minutes of training would be enough.”

Particularly irritated by private companies being in charge of the cleanup effort was Stinson Beach Fire Chief Kenny Stephens. One cleanup company called Clean Bay had regularly practiced at Bolinas Lagoon, but it never showed up, Stephens noted. Finally a company call NRC arrived (above) “four days late and about 40 people short,” he added. NRC was supposed to string a boom across the Bolinas Lagoon channel but didn’t know what to do.

Stinson Beach and Bolinas residents during the much larger oil spill of 1971 had figured out how to erect a wooden boom across the channel mouth to keep oil out of the lagoon. NCR, however, tried to use foam-filled booms that broke every time the tide came in, even though Bolinas and Stinson Beach residents had already determined such booms (as seen here) wouldn’t hold up. After the fifth boom broke, NCR gave up.

The volunteers above are on Kent Island within the lagoon. At the time, mired birds but no floating oil had come in off the ocean, although it has by now.

Bolinas fisherman and other local residents, are familiar with currents and the contours of the channel, the fire chief said. However, he added, those running the cleanup “didn’t put local knowledge to use.” Residents wanted to get involved, “but our hands were tied,” Chief Stephens said. The only outside official who initially worked with the two towns, he added, was Brian Sanders of Marin Parks and Open Space.

Northern California oil-spill-cleanup teams were so unprepared for even this medium-sized spill that “they’re tapped out of boom material,” Stephens said with amazement. The chief credited Sanders with “doing a great job locating lots of stuff” for Bolinas and Stinson Beach to use in trying to contain the floating oil.

On Nov. 11, the Bolinas Fire Department held a community meeting in which residents complained about members of the public not getting official cooperation when they cleaned oil from beaches.

Meanwhile in Congress, the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Marine Transportation on Nov. 19 questioned the Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board about six concerns in particular, The Chronicle reported:

Whether the pilot should have attempted to leave port in heavy fog when he had doubts about the ship’s radar.

Whether the pilot of the Cosco Busan was wrong in relying on the ship’s captain to interpret an electronic-chart system with which the pilot wasn’t familiar.

Whether there was a language problem between the local pilot and the Chinese crew.

Whether the Coast Guard should have warned the pilot sooner that the ship was heading toward a bridge tower.

Whether the tugboat accompanying the Cosco Busan could have been used to avoid the collision.

Whether freighters, like tanker ships, need double hulls.

Congressional leaders, however, were unhappy with the answers they got from the Coast Guard and especially the National Transportation Safety Board, which said it would need a year to figure out what had happened.

Irritated that the Coast Guard and the California Department of Fish & Game are now responsible for investigating their own behavior in the wake of the spill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remarked, “I don’t think they have the credibility to self-examine or self-investigate.” Pelosi, a member of the subcommittee, said Congress has now asked the inspector general of Homeland Security to conduct a separate probe.

The Department of Homeland Security, like the occupation of Iraq, is unfortunately a cornerstone of the Bush Administration’s “War on Terror.” Already the California Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Save the Bay, and the Sierra Club have warned that the Coast Guard’s new emphasis on “homeland security” may be hampering its ability to cope with an oil spill. (Remember when there was a shortage of National Guardsmen to help Hurricane Katrina victims because so many guardsmen had been sent to Iraq?)

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.”

But it was typical government BS. Stung by widespread criticism that it had waited too long before trying to contain the spill, the Coast Guard had already replaced the regional commander, Capt. William Uberti (left). Capt. Paul Gugg is the new Bay Area region commander and is now in charge of the Coast Guard’s part of the cleanup. Photo by Gustav Adam

The moon was full Saturday night, and in the Giacomini family’s pasture next to my cabin, a coyote howled off and on from 12:30 to 3:30 a.m. Sometimes I could hear a second coyote answering from the Point Reyes Station Mesa.

During the past five winters, I’ve seen a coyote in my backyard stalking fawns, which bounded away while the coyote was squeezing under a barbed-wire fence; I’ve seen a coyote on Highway 1 downhill from the cabin; and I’ve found coyote tracks in frost on my steps. I’ve also seen coyotes twice on Limantour Road and once beside Nicasio Reservoir. Twice recently, my houseguest Linda Peterson has seen coyotes along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard near the Mount Vision Overlook turnoff, where she shot this photo. [Update: Since this posting went online, Linda has spotted (and photographed) yet another coyote.] In short, coyotes are again common throughout West Marin.

Coyotes were once so common here that the town of Olema took its name from the Miwok Indian word for coyote. But in the 1940s, sheep ranchers using poisoned bait were able to eliminate coyotes in West Marin and southwestern Sonoma County, and there were none here for 40 years.

In 1972, however, the Nixon Administration banned use of the poison 10-80, primarily because it was non-specific and killed many other animals too. Coyotes, which had never disappeared from northern Sonoma County, then began spreading south. Since they began showing up here again in 1983, they have put more than half the sheep ranches around Marshall, Tomales, Dillon Beach, and Valley Ford out of business.

In West Marin these nights, they can be heard howling as far inland as the San Geronimo Valley, and for listeners who aren’t sheepmen, the high-pitched, barking howls are a beguiling reminder of life on the western frontier.

Frontiersman Davy Crockett (1786-1836) liked to claim his reputation as a hunter preceded him into the forest. As Crockett told the story, he once treed a raccoon that resignedly cried out: “Don’t shoot, Colonel! I’ll come down! I know I’m a gone ‘coon.” This here raccoon was lucky to merely be shot with my camera.

An old friend, Joy Adam, who has been living in Germany for 20 years, dropped by my cabin Saturday night and cooked some spicy dishes from India as a birthday dinner.

Here one of the guests, Gabriela Melano of Nicasio, has a through-the-glass encounter with one of this hill’s roaming raccoons.

On Friday, I had turned 64, and my former wife Ana Carolina in Guatemala had emailed me the lyrics to the Beatles’ song When I’m 64. During Saturday’s birthday dinner, Nina Howard of Inverness, Joy, and Linda used a printout of the lyrics to serenade me with; “When I get older, losing my hair/ Many years from now/ Will you still be sending me a valentine/ Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?/ If I’d been out till quarter to three/ Would you lock the door?/ Will you still need me/ Will you still feed me/ When I’m 64?”

I’d already had a earlier birthday dinner Friday at the Station House Café with my houseguest Linda plus Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park, her partner Terry, her daughter Seeva, and our mutual friend Cheryl Keltner of Point Reyes Station.

Sixty-four didn’t sound that old when all of them sang Happy Birthday to You on Friday, but on Saturday after paying attention to the words to the Beatles’ song, I found myself wondering about my Social Security.

As it happened, I was sitting at my dining-room table when I spotted Ms. Raccoon looking over my shoulder, so I asked her what she thought about someone turning 64. Using my camera, Nina snapped this photo as Ms. Raccoon stuck out her tongue in reply.

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.

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.

By now wild turkeys are common throughout West Marin, particularly around Spirit Rock and Flanders Ranch in Woodacre (where they’re protected), around Tomales (where they’ve shorted out overhead lines and intimidated children), and around Nicasio, Point Reyes Station, and Olema.

The only folks doing much turkey hunting around here anymore, however, are Point Reyes National Seashore rangers. As might be expected, the park has attempted to eliminate these “exotic” symbols of America’s first Thanksgiving celebrations.

America’s Thanksgiving, as it happens, originated with two celebrations. The initial one was held by Virgina colonists in 1619 to thank God for an abundant harvest. Two years later, Massachusetts colonists held a Thanksgiving celebration after their first harvest. This second celebration was the one where the governor of Plymouth Colony invited the Wampanoag people to join them for three days of feasting, and the Indians brought venison to the potluck.

Every year at this time, I like many other people in the Western World display a cornucopia at home. I knew from my days as a Latin student that cornu means horn and copia means plenty, but until last year, I’d never looked into the mythology behind the display. It turns out to be fascinating and has to do with the birth of the god Zeus.

The ancient Greeks and Romans considered Zeus the youngest son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. Cronus, who then ruled the world, supposedly had been told that he would lose his throne to one of his children, so he gulped down each one when it was born. To avoid having another baby eaten, Rhea secretly gave birth to Zeus in Crete. She then wrapped a rock as if it were a baby and gave it to Cronus, who swallowed it whole.

Growing up on Crete, Zeus was protected by a goat named Amalthea, who also provided him with milk. One day while the young god was playing with Amalthea, he accidentally broke off one of her horns. Horrified by the pain and distress he’d caused his surrogate mother, Zeus promised Amalthea that forever after, the horn would always be full of whatever good things she desired. Thus was born the cornucopia that many of us display each fall as a symbol of an abundant year.

And may you too get whatever good things you desire during these end-of-the-year holidays.

A reminder: This year the annual West Marin Community Thanksgiving Dinner will be held in Point Reyes Station’s Dance Palace. Turkey dinners will be served at no charge (although donations are always welcome) from 2 to 3 p.m. And for the first time, those planning to attend have not been asked to make reservations. However, people willing to volunteer time serving the dinner have been asked to call West Marin Community Resource Center at 663-8361.

“I have been one acquainted with the night.” Robert Frost, 1928

Crescent moon at sunset Wednesday, along with an Oregon junco on my railing. Every culture I’ve encountered enjoys colorful sunsets but feels some apprehension when night falls, fearing danger may lurk unseen in the dark. Here are some more creatures I’ve recently managed to photograph with a flash around my cabin after nightfall.

A young but aggressive (toward other raccoons) male in my pine tree. The “waschbar (wash bear),” as a raccoon is called in German, is indeed in the same order (dog-like carnivorans) as bears, and it does like to wash its paws, although not necessarily its food. When a raccoon finds acorns in the forest, it makes no attempt to wash them, causing some zoologists to believe raccoons actually wash their paws to increase tactile sensitivity.

Judging from the amount of grit raccoons leave in my birdbath, however, I suspect that some of the washing is simply a matter of cleaning debris from their paws. Here my camera’s flash gives the raccoon both green and white eye shine. (Please see Posting 12 for an explanation.)

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“Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night…. Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness” Psalms 91

A roof rat gets a drink from my birdbath at night.

The rat, a native of southern Asia, is the same species (Rattus rattus) whose fleas spread bubonic plague throughout Europe in the 1340s, killing off half the population.

In West Marin, however, roof rats don’t transmit such pestilence, but they are a threat to dishwashers. (Please see Posting 13 for an explantion.)

“From ghoulies and ghosties/ And long-leggedy beasties/ And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!” Traditional Scottish prayer

At 2:30 a.m. one night last week, I was working on this blog at my computer upstairs when I was startled by something that bumped loudly into the window next to my desk and then flapped up and down the glass before coming to rest on my window sill. A few feet from me, a stunned bird sat around long enough for me to shoot this photo, which I then showed ornithologist Rich Stallcup of Point Reyes Station.

To me the bird looked like a starling, and I assumed my desk lamp had confused it. But what was it doing flying around in the dark at 2:30 a.m.? “It is a European starling,” Stallcup confirmed. “Often when birds are migrating at night or when they are disturbed from a night roost, they are dazzled by, and attracted to, artificial light sources like lighthouses and your desk lamp.”

Nonetheless, bumping into my window can’t have been any fun for the starling, and it may have decided, in the words of Lord Byron, “We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.”

Two skimmer vessels collect bunker oil offshore of Bolinas Beach late Friday afternoon. Although spilled oil had not yet reached Stinson Beach or Bolinas Beach as of Friday evening, several dozen oily birds had washed up still alive, or had been found dead, or could be seen still swimming just offshore.

An 900-foot-long container ship, the Cosco Busan, at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday hit a plastic-and-concrete fender protecting a Bay Bridge tower. The collision tore a hole in the ship’s hull, causing 58,000 gallons of bunker oil to spill into San Francisco Bay.

Over the next three days, much of the oil drifted out the Golden Gate and is now miring birds along the West Marin Coast.

The collision in heavy fog did not damage the bridge tower (the second west of Yerba Buena), but it left a 100-foot-long, 12-foot-high gash in the ship’s hull. The Cosco Busan is owned by a Regal Stone Ltd. of Hong Kong but leased to Hanjin Shipping of Seoul, South Korea.

The pilot, John Cota, 59, of Petaluma, has 26 years of experience, and Coast Guard tests of crew on the ship’s bridge found no indication that alcohol was involved in the mishap. The results of drug tests are still pending, and the reason why the ship was off course has not yet been determined. However, the pilot’s attorney on Friday told The San Francisco Chronicle that shortly before the collision, the Coast Guard by radio had questioned the ship’s heading and that Costa radioed back that the navigational aids on the Cosco Busan indicated the ship would pass midway between two towers. The radio transmissions were recorded.

Oiled birds in the lagoon behind Rodeo Beach on the Marin Headlands. (Photo by Gustav Adam)

Booms keep oil from backing up Muir Beach’s Redwood Creek at high tide. A few oiled birds, along with oily seaweed, were found at Muir Beach.

Thursday night a boom was strung across the mouth of Bolinas Lagoon’s channel, but the tide in and out of the lagoon created more of a current than the boom could withstand, as Stinson Beach firefighters here confirm. Friday night a second boom was installed, but it too could not handle the current and let the tide through. A third attempt was made for Saturday night. But it failed, as did a fourth attempt Sunday.

For many Bolinas residents, the accident brought to mind the mammoth 1971 spill that resulted when two oil tankers, the Oregon Standard and the Arizona Standard, collided in fog off Angel Island. Each tanker had been carrying more than 100,000 gallons of bunker oil, and the two ships, unable to separate, drifted out the Golden Gate.

More than 10,000 birds died from the oil, many of them along Bolinas and Stinson Beach. At that time, phone poles were strung across the channel and anchored to posts sunk on both shores. According to West Marin lore, scores of counterculture volunteers who showed up to rescue birds saw Bolinas for the first time and liked what they saw. Some stayed and forever changed the character of the town.

Two skimmer vessels brought in by the Coast Guard use booms to circle patches of bunker oil at sunset Friday off Stinson Beach. Tidal currents by Friday evening had carried the bulk of the 58,000 spill out the Golden Gate, leaving it centered two to three miles off Stinson Beach. (Photo by Gustav Adam)

This photo exhibition in progress focuses on the variety of nature that can be seen from the two acres in Point Reyes Station where I live.

In his book The Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula, biologist Jules Evens of Point Reyes Station writes: “The Coast Miwok and the Pomo, who inhabited these shores for at least 5,000 years, were tideland collectors, acorn gatherers, and game hunters who survived and measured time by the seasonal abundance of food. For those early people each season, counted by phases of the moon, brought its own sustenance. One moon was for gathering herbs; one marked the return of the ducks; another marked their departure. On the bright full moon of midwinter, hunting could be difficult.”

Here is a look at what can be seen at this time of year.

A Buckeye butterfly lands on a chrysanthemum outside my cabin Sunday.

This week’s gibbous moon was waxing, and October’s full moon will be Friday night. A gibbous moon is one that’s not full, but more than half its facing hemisphere is illuminated. Since childhood I have been fascinated by being able to see the moon’s topography along its terminator, the boundary between the illuminated and unilluminated hemispheres. At upper left, the dark, mile-deep crater shaped like a five-pointed star is 69-mile-wide Crater Gassendi. The light area immediately below the crater is the Mare Humorum, Moist Sea, formed by lava 3.9 billion years ago. This photo, like most on my blog, was shot with a $270 Kodak EasyShare camera, which came with a 10-power zoom. Newer models cost less and have a 12-power zoom.

A young blacktail buck next to my cabin just before recent rains turned grass green.

A Lesser goldfinch eating buds on my rosemary bush. Lesser goldfinches eat seeds, flower buds, and berries. Point Reyes Station ornithologist Rich Stallcup, who identified the finch in the photo, this week told me, “Lesser goldfinches… are way less common than American goldfinches in West Marin during summer. There is an upward pulse in their numbers in the fall. Then both species withdraw a bit inland for the winter.”

A Western fence lizard suns herself outside my cabin. Western fence lizards eat insects and spiders, and they, in turn, are eaten by birds and snakes, which typically catch them while they’re sunning themselves.

A tip of the hat this week to Rod Ruiz, supervising ranger for Marin County parks. When alerted 10 days ago to a paradox at White House Pool (no scenery visible from some scenic overlooks along Papermill Creek), he promptly fixed the problem.

White House Pool Park is named after a wide spot in Papermill/Lagunitas Creek. Bounded by that creek to the east and Point Reyes Station’s levee road to the west, the park stretches from the Olema Creek tributary to a parking lot near the intersection of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and Bear Valley Road. At each end is a rustic bridge.

Meandering the length of the park is a storybook-like path through lush foliage, making it popular with West Marin residents from seniors out for a stroll to bicyclists to dog walkers. As can be seen at upper left, here and there along the way, county Parks and Open Space has cut narrow lanes that branch off the main path and tunnel through foliage to the edge of the levee. At the end of each lane, permanent benches overlooking Papermill Creek provide places for walkers to rest and enjoy the scenery.

Unfortunately, in the past couple of years, foliage in front of half the benches got so high that views of the creek and the landscape beyond it were lost. Here Linda Petersen of Point Reyes Station two weeks ago tries to again spot four river otters she’d seen fishing just downstream the previous day. But from this lane and the bench at the end of it, the creek was mostly hidden. Linda was able to move to another vantage point, but her options were relatively few.

This week, Linda’s aging dog Sebastian had a much better view from the same bench. His vision needs all the help it can get, so the change was probably dramatic for him too. What had changed? Ten days ago, ranger Ruiz was told that although the benches had been been anchored where they would provide scenic views, there were no longer any views from several benches. The county was, in effect, maintaining lanes through foliage that came to dead-ends in more foliage. Ruiz said he would make sure the lanes were properly taken care of and did. It should be stressed that the county did not remove vegetation from the creek bank (i.e. riparian vegetation) but merely trimmed foliage on top of the levee. Those who enjoy looking out at the views from White House Pool can credit supervising ranger Ruiz with looking out for them.

Two red-tailed hawks above my cabin, part of a family group of four. Biologist Jules Evans of Point Reyes Station notes this time of year is also the height of the coast’s hawk migration, which can best be seen at Hawk Hill on the Marin Headlands. For those who haven’t been there before, here are directions. While southbound on Highway 101, take the last Sausalito exit before the Golden Gate Bridge, turn left a short distance, and then turn right onto Conzelman Road. Go a ways and then watch for the sign for Hawk Hill.

Although this is the height of the hawk migration, which includes red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks along with falcons and turkey vultures, the migration can be seen throughout the fall at Hawk Hill. The hill is so named because migrating hawks, falcons, and vultures reconnoiter above it before crossing the Golden Gate, which is why so many hawks can be seen circling there. Biologist Evans notes that not all members of these species are migratory. Some are year-round residents of West Marin.