“Badger hates Society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing,” Kenneth Grahame wrote in The Wind in the Willows. “The badger is a wary animal,” concurs Point Reyes Station naturalist Jules Evans in his book The Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula.

Badgers dig a “wide, oblong burrow,” Evans notes. The burrows are often easy to locate by mounds of dirt around their entrances. It’s not uncommon for new badger burrows to be excavated overnight in my field or in the Giacomini family’s field next door. A friend once spotted a badger on a mound outside my window, but it scrambled into its burrow before I caught a glimpse of it.

I was naturally envious of my friend, and for more than 10 years since then, I’ve been trying see one of this hill’s badgers for myself. I never managed to do so, however, until this week.

My first glimpse of a badger here occurred Monday when I spotted one about 150 yards away in the Giacomini field. I tried to get a picture of the badger, but that meant zooming my little Kodak’s telephoto to the max. Keeping the telephoto steady while fully extended required using a tripod, and by the time I got mine out, the badger was gone. Tuesday I was better prepared, but this time before I could snap a photo, two deer ran past the burrow, prompting the badger to dart inside.

Around noon Wednesday, I once again spotted the badger sunning itself on its mound, and this time my camera and tripod were ready. I had been thrilled just to finally see the badger, but to also be able to photograph it made my week.

Who knows how long the badger will stick around, but I now feel confident I will see it again. As Badger remarks in The Wind in the Willows, “We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be.”

Ratty, as he is called in The Wind in the Willows, showed up on my deck Tuesday to take a drink from the birdbath and eat whatever birdseed he could find.

Our local roof rats, rattus rattus, are native to southern Asia and are the same rats whose fleas spread the Black Death through Europe in the 1340s, killing off half the population in many places.

Although roof rats can carry murine typhus in the South, in West Marin, the main danger they pose is to dishwashers. You can read all about it at Posting 13. Roof rats can measure a foot long, including their tails, which are longer than their bodies.

Nor were Badger and Ratty the only sightings of Spring on my hill this week. Wild turkeys are back. All week I’ve been able to hear them gobbling, and periodically I’ve seen a tom fanning its tail feathers for three hens. Back after a longer absence, possums have twice visited my deck recently, and on two other occasions, gray foxes have paid calls on me.

About three weeks ago, in fact, I witnessed a confrontation on my deck between two raccoons and a fox. The fox pulled up short when he spotted the raccoons, and when one raccoon growled at it, the fox made a quick departure. Unfortunately, all this happened so fast I didn’t have a chance to even reach for my camera.

In Spring a young raccoon’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, to paraphrase Tennyson.

Indeed on Tuesday evening when I looked out my kitchen door, two young raccoons were making love on my deck.

As is de rigueur among animals other than humans and bonobos, the male raccoon was mounting the female from the rear.

My surprise came when the young male suddenly rolled his mate onto her back, and they continued on face to face.

Even more of a surprise was that they sometimes appeared to be actually making love.

I expected the male to behave more roughly, but these two raccoons were relatively sensual, at times both hugging each other as they rolled around my deck.

I’ve never read much about raccoon passion, which makes me wonder: The Sensual Raccoon, doesn’t that sound like the title of a bestseller?

However, there was — much as I’m loath to acknowledge it — a brazen aspect to the raccoons’ mating. They saw me taking pictures yet they kept right on performing.

Windstorm destruction. The historic house where Dave Dinsmore lives on Nicasio Square has withstood more than a couple of blows over the years from speeding southbound vehicles. Coming at the end of a long straightaway into town, Nicasio Valley Road’s 90-degree turn in front of the house has sent nighttime speeders flying off the road and into the fence and porch. This week, however, the blow came from a gale that sent half a tree crashing down onto the porch’s roof. No doubt the resilient residence will recover from this blow too.

West Marin’s gales of Spring are back. In response to last week’s posting about Google’s inaccurate current-weather reports for Point Reyes Station, reader Linda Sturdivant phoned me around 3 p.m. Tuesday to talk about the weather.

Linda, who lives on Portola Avenue in neighboring Inverness Park, was concerned about the gathering windstorm, for she could hear limbs cracking in the bishop pine canopy over her home. Linda’s partner Terry Gray told me he too was concerned and then went outside to move his pickup truck. A large branch had broken and momentarily was caught in other branches, but it was hanging over the truck.

When the winds finally knocked the broken limb to the ground, Terry later told me, it turned out to be about 13 feet long and about 10 inches in diameter at the break. That’s enough to dent the roof of a truck’s cab or break a windshield or both.

Less fortunate were at least one or two birds that apparently could not get out of the way in time when branches snapped, or flew into something while trying to escape the chaos. Leo Gilberti of Woodacre, who was doing some cleanup work for Linda Wednesday, found two dead little birds on the ground outside her home.

One had a broken neck, which can happen when a bird flies into a window pane, but the right side of the other bird’s chest was crushed although there were no puncture wounds.

Point Reyes Station naturalist Jules Evans has tentatively identified the birds as pine siskins based on this bird’s “cleft tail, streaked breast, and finch-like bill.” I had emailed Jules the photo above, which he viewed on his handheld BlackBerry, leading him to caution that the bird was “kind of hard to ID on my phone.”

As it did elsewhere in West Marin, Tuesday’s gale brought down limbs all along Portola Avenue in Inverness Park, keeping part of the road closed throughout Wednesday.

Although gales blow through West Marin every spring, I’m not particularly fond of them. Wildlife and livestock obviously aren’t either.

Life looked pretty tranquil for cows along the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road until this week’s windstorm.

Reflected in the windows of neighbors Dan and Mary Huntsmans’ potting shed, a cat that could never have perched on their gatepost in this week’s gale could sit there nonchalantly last week.

In a gale, there is no such thing as “straight as the crow flies.” These feathered flying machines may not be as fast as fighter jets, but they’re even more maneuverable. Once the gusts built up, the crow approach to the birdbath on my deck resembled dogfight maneuvers more than a landing pattern.

Against my better judgment I showed up for Friday’s “Community Conversation” concerning the Point Reyes National Seashore’s intention to close Drakes Bay Oyster Company. Since retiring three years ago, I’ve continued to write about public issues in West Marin, but I haven’t taken part in many political events. Having achieved Nirvana, I’d rather not disturb it.

But Friday evening, I was one of 125 or so West Marin residents who filled the Inverness Yacht Club for a heavily structured discussion of the park.

Sounding like marriage counselors, a team of moderators started the meeting by telling us we were there to express our feelings, not to present facts.

To avoid bad feelings, we couldn’t criticize anybody by name (e.g. National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher) but could only refer to his organization (e.g. “the park”). In fact, the moderators later called me out for naming names when I said President Obama is an improvement over President Bush.

The members of a “community” need to “communicate,” the moderators said more than once. No speaker should hog the microphone, they added, but were themselves slow to relinquish it. After more than half an hour of a two-hour meeting had been spent on these introductory comments with no letup in sight, I began eying the door next to me only to discover it merely went to a fire escape. On the other hand, the moderators’ efforts to ensure parlor-like decorum did pay off. I can recall more acrimony during a public discussion of museum hours.

Phyllis Faber told the group that Supt. Neubacher was away but had said that even if he were in town, he wouldn’t attend.

Faber added that Neubacher also said the park’s associate superintendent was likewise out of town but would have attended were she here. (Faber is co-founder of MALT, a fellow of the California Native Plant Society, and an author of a botanical guide, so her account is probably reliable.)

At the Drakes Bay Oyster Company site (seen here), oysters are sold and canned. A Park Service use permit, which expires in 2012, is strictly for these onshore facilities and not for oyster growing in the estero itself, which has been designated “potential wilderness.” Neubacher supporters have claimed that extending the onshore facilities’ use permit would be a threat to wilderness nationwide because of the precedent it would set. Others claim that makes neither legal nor logical sense.

Gordon Bennett, a member of the Marin Group of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the national Sierra Club, has been carrying Neubacher’s water (not always with the support of his group) ever since the park superintendent three years ago first proposed shutting down the oyster company come 2012. On the eve of Friday’s meeting, Bennett sent an email to those sympathetic to Neubacher, warning them off by claiming the meeting was a “set-up” which had been “organized by proponents” of the oyster company.

It’s hard to tell whether the email had any effect. Some members of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, which supports Neubacher’s position, were on hand, including its president and a former board member. A couple of people, including forester Tom Gaman of Inverness, said the park should get rid of the oyster company to create wilderness.

Most of those who spoke, however, like most West Marin residents one hears on the street, supported the company. Several people, such as innkeeper Frank Borodic of Olema, said the oyster company is well run and good for the environment.

After two hours, however, only a couple of proposals got virtually unanimous support from the audience: 1) have additional oyster-company critics at future Community Conversations in order to create more of a dialogue; 2) get Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey to introduce legislation resurrecting the Citizens Advisory Commission to the GGNRA and Point Reyes National Seashore.

Because the two parks were established to serve the Bay Area’s mostly urban population, Congress in 1972 decided that Bay Area local governments should nominate candidates for a Citizens Advisory Commission, which would then be appointed by the US Secretary of the Interior.

Since they were appointed by a member of the president’s cabinet, the commissioners’ decisions, while only advisory, carried weight with the park administration. A superintendent could not ignore them without risking his job, former Supt. John Sansing once told me.

Supt. Neubacher and his staff have tried to discredit Drakes Bay Oyster Company by telling county and federal officials that seals are frightened away by the growing and harvesting of oysters. Apparently not having heard about this, the 18 harbor seals seen here are sunning themselves on oyster racks in neighboring Tomales Bay.

The advisory commission had needed Congressional reauthorization every few years, and for almost three decades, Congress approved it. However, in 2002, its term expired, and with Republicans in charge of Congress and the White House, the commission was allowed to die.

This time [then-Interior Secretary] Gale Norton and the Park Service said, “It’s been a very good commission for 29 years, but we don’t need it anymore,” former Commissioner Amy Meyer told me in 2007. National Seashore spokesman John Dell’Osso in 2004 had already told me the park administration did not want the commission revived because it sometimes interfered with what the Park Service felt should be done.

The Neubacher administration has also argued that local residents don’t speak for all Americans. It’s a specious argument since most park visitors are from the nine-county Bay Area and are far more familiar with the park, and with anything going wrong in it, than are people in other parts of the country, who seldom, if ever, see the National Seashore.

Closely following Friday’s discussion are oyster company owners Kevin and Nancy Lunny.

Meyer noted the commission had acted as an “interface” between the public and the park, and its absence has been felt. In the past four years, there has been widespread public dissatisfaction with the National Seashore over: 1) a 2004 ranger-pepper-spray scandal; 2) the inhumane slaughter of non-indigenous deer a year ago; 3) the present oyster-company dispute. Without the advisory commission to provide the public with a forum for resolving these issues, they have become so contentious that Supt. Neubacher is seldom seen around town anymore.

Congresswoman Woolsey four years ago introduced legislation to resurrect the commission, and it was attached to a House bill (which was being pushed by now-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others) to acquire land in San Mateo County for the GGNRA. The bill passed in 2005, but when it did, the rider resurrecting the commission was gone.

Meyer said she and other people went to Congresswomen Pelosi and Woolsey, asking that they temporarily drop the advisory-commission legislation. The fear, Meyer said, was that the Bush Administration would pack the advisory commission with people who shared his ideology.

On Friday night, I suggested that since we now have the Obama administration, the time is ripe to resurrect the commission. A number of other speakers, including Liza Crosse, aide to Marin County Supervior Steve Kinsey, agreed. And when a show of hands was taken later, almost everyone supported the idea, regardless of where they stood on the oyster-company issue.

Father Jack O’Neill (center), pastor of Sacred Heart Parish, flanked by Marin County Fire Capt. Todd Overshiner and Mike Krillelea of San Rafael, jokes with guests at today’s barbecue.

A warning sign of Spring: Hundreds of people showed up at the Dance Palace this afternoon for Sacred Heart Church’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Barbecue.

West Marin Irish Music Players, who practice from 7 to 9 p.m. Mondays at West Marin School, entertained guests.

A volunteer bartender at the St. Patrick’s Day Barbecue, Mark Allen (left) of Inverness Park, takes an order for an Irish coffee.

Mark was the lead cameraman for a 60 Minutes segment, scheduled to be aired at 7 p.m. this evening, on “slow-food” advocate Alice Waters of Chez Panisse.

Some 446 chicken dinners were served inside the Dance Palace while outside the community center, Drakes Bay Oyster Company barbecued 1,000 oysters as part of the fundraiser. In the foreground shucking oysters are company owner Kevin Lunny (right) and John Aucoin of Inverness Park.

Anastacio Gonzalez of Point Reyes Station, head of technical maintenance at West Marin School, provided his special barbecue sauce for the oysters. Here he checks to see whether he’ll need to make more when he goes home.

Almost 30 years ago, Anastacio devised the recipe while barbecuing oysters at the old Nicks Cove restaurant. He then took it to the former Barnaby’s restaurant in Inverness (now Thepmonggon Thai restaurant), and later to Tony’s Seafood. By now, barbecuing with sauce inspired by his recipe is a standard way of preparing oysters in the Tomales Bay area.

Today’s rain held off until just after the barbecue finished, which was good because both the chickens and oysters were barbecued outdoors and because many guests chose to eat them picnic style on the Dance Palace’s front lawn. With Spring only five days off, ranchers are hoping to squeeze the last bit of moisture out of winter. When the current series of rainstorms began, my neighbor Jay Haas shot this photo of a stockpond overflowing on the Giacomini family’s land next to ours.

Another warning sign of Spring: The gloomy days of winter are supposed to be over “when the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobin’ along.” But at Jay’s home this year, the first robin of Spring is not “red, red” but partially albino. (Photo by Jay Haas)

“For some reason, albinism and partial albinism have been recorded in robins more than any other wild bird species,” the website American Robin reports.

“One study found that 8.22 percent of all albino wild birds found in North America were robins. But only about one robin in 30,000 is an albino or partial albino. Most records of robins with albinism are only partial albinos, which of course live longer than total albinos.”

As American Robin explains, totally albino birds have no pigment in their irises and retinas to protect their eyes from sunlight, and many eventually go blind.

“Climate is what you expect,” novelist Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) wrote. “Weather is what you get.”

And we sure got a lot of it yesterday. Following a wet night, Point Reyes Station by noon was sunny. By early afternoon, however, the day had turned cloudy. The full storm hit in mid-afternoon: lightning flashes and thunder in the welkin, hail and then a downpour here below.

The contrast between West Marin’s rainstorms and the three-year drought elsewhere in California was on both our minds when John Korty, Point Reyes Station’s Academy Award-winning director, and I ran into each other in the Palace Market last evening. Paradoxically, we found ourselves exchanging pleasantries about how nice the past two weeks of bad weather have been.

Marin Municipal Water District this morning reported that 3.2 inches of rain had fallen since Monday and that the amount of water in its seven reservoirs combined has reached 94 percent of normal for this time of year. All but Kent Lake (the largest reservoir) and the Soulajule Reservoir (the third largest) are full.

MMWD spokeswoman Libby Pichel told me the district is currently considering a permanent change in its system that would allow water from Nicasio Reservoir, which is relatively shallow and overflows earlier, to be pumped into Kent Lake.

West Marin has suffered through three droughts in the past 80 years. A couple of them lasted six years, 1929 through 1934 and 1987 through 1992. A two-year drought (barely over 20 inches of rain each year) kept West Marin parched in 1976 and 1977.

During a break in the weather two days ago, I watched a young doe head across my field in order to graze next to a neighbor’s cat, which was keeping an eye on a gopher hole. The pet cat remained unperturbed while the curious deer circled around it only a few feet away.

Raccoons too seem to enjoy many of the things we humans own. If I’m cooking and leave the door open to air out the kitchen, the raccoons that frequent my birdbath will pass by on the deck but refrain from entering my cabin — usually.

However, as the Gospel according to Matthew notes, “The dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” I don’t own a dog, but Monday I noted that a raccoon will eat of the bread which falls from the kitchen counter.

Nicasio Reservoir overflowed early today, symbolically extricating West Marin from California’s three-year drought. The land draining into the Marin Municipal Water District reservoir has received seven inches of rain in the past eight days, district spokeswoman Libby Pischel told me.

On April 1, the amount of water in MMWD’s reservoirs will determine whether the district considers this a drought year, Pischel said, and district projections now are far rosier than they were at the end of January. MMWD reservoirs currently are 75 percent full, she noted, adding that they would normally be 85 percent full at this time of year.

The present storm system and one a week ago have been especially welcome in Bolinas. Two weeks ago Bolinas Community Public Utility District’s main reservoir, Woodrat II, was essentially dry, and BCPUD directors had voted to limit each household, regardless of size, to 150 gallons of water per day. By mid-afternoon today, the reservoir had risen to within two feet of capacity.

“We’re very grateful,” BCPUD general manager Jennifer Blackman told me during this afternoon’s rainfall. “We’re in a much better place than we were last month.” Although “rationing is still in place,” Blackman said, BCPUD directors last week held off voting on further restrictions because the current rain was being forecast.

Nicasio Reservoir that overflowed today is one of seven belonging to Marin Municipal Water District, which serves the San Geronimo Valley and most of East Marin south of Novato.

Shortly after noon, I began clambering up the embankment across the spillway from the dam in order to photograph the historic event.

Twice before in the past 30 years, I did this for The Point Reyes Light to record the ends of previous droughts. It’s never an easy climb. The slope is rocky and extremely steep with few hand holds in some places and dense brush in others.

This time was worse than ever. I was halfway to a ledge high enough to look down on the reservoir when my feet slid out from under me. I dropped to my hands only to have my camera fall out of a parka pocket. With dismay I watched as it tumbled away down the rocky slope.

Gloomily, I crawled and slid after it, muddying my pants, as well as bloodying my hands on the rocks. When I finally reached the bottom, however, I found a happy surprise. The camera had survived the rough descent better than I had. Kodak cameras are apparently as sturdy as they’re cheap. After wiping mine off, I secured it around my neck and once again began climbing.

Luckily, deer trails crisscross the slope, which made traversing it at least possible although not easy. But when I finally reached the ledge from which I could photograph the dam and spillway with the reservoir behind them, the scene easily compensated for my scrapes and bruises.

Seasonal waterfall. Driving from Point Reyes Station to the dam and back, I noted that every gully along the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road had become a stream which flowed into Papermill/Lagunitas Creek. When rainfall is normal, these small waterfalls are annual roadside attractions.

My hill too changes during heavy rains. When I looked out the dining-room window yesterday morning (that’s my cabin in the background), I spotted what appeared to be a piece of plastic flapping in the grass. My first impulse was to wait until the rain stopped before going outside to pick it up, but then I realized that what appeared to be plastic was actually water bubbling up.

An artesian spring had sprung up out of a gopher hole. That’s common in these coastal hills and, in fact, can damage ranchers’ pastures. During heavy rains, hillsides that have become honeycombed with gopher tunnels act like a sponge. If the top two or three feet of soil become over-saturated, wholesale slumping can occur.

And finally for all you cynics out there, no, there is no water pipe or septic line uphill from this artesian spring. Stay warm and enjoy the bad weather. With any luck, we’ll get more of it.

This Valentine’s Day greeting comes to you from a flock of Canada geese aloft between Inverness Ridge and my cabin.

Since the Middle Ages, Valentine’s Day, or St. Valentine’s Day, has been associated with lovers. But it wasn’t always this way.

In fact, the Catholic Church until as recently as 1969 recognized 11 St. Valentine’s Days annually, each in memory of a different religious martyr named Valentine. The Valentine’s Day traditionally celebrated on Feb. 14 is in honor of St. Valentine of Turni (a bishop martyred 197 AD during a persecution of Christians by the Roman Emperor Aurelian) and St. Valentine of Rome (a priest martyred in 269 AD).

The remains of St. Valentine of Turni are buried in Rome while those of St. Valentine of Rome are buried in Rome, Dublin, and (according to islanders) on Malta. In any case, after a few hundred years went by, lay people didn’t distinguish between these two St. Valentines.

Another St. Valentine was supposedly executed under orders from the Emperor Claudius II, who had unsuccessfully urged him to become a pagan. According to lore, this St. Valentine healed his jailer’s blind daughter, and on the eve of his execution, he sent her a message, which he signed, “Your Valentine.” Other lore says he sent the message to a girlfriend, which may explain why a religious holiday evolved into a romantic celebration.

However, it wasn’t until the 1800s that the tradition of lovers exchanging Valentines on Feb. 14 began. The tradition started in England and spread to the United States just in time for the Industrial Revolution to make possible the mass production of  Valentine’s cards. By now an estimated one billion are mailed each year worldwide.

Sealed with a kiss. I spotted these harbor seals sunning themselves last month on a sandbar at the mouth of the Russian River. And may you too find yourself with a warm companion this Saturday.

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.

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.