“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)

Update as of Saturday, Nov. 10: Mitzi and Chelsea, Home Birth (1977 Berkeley). Kathleen Goodwin from California Trip, has been selected by Black & White Magazine for a gold award in the Photojournalism category of the magazine’s Single Image Contest. Altogether 5493 images were received, and Kathleen said she feels “truly honored to have reached the top of such a tall pyramid.” The issue of Black & White featuring award winners will arrive on newsstands the last week of November.

Surf, Rocks, Mountains, Rocky Point ©Richard Blair

More than 200 people showed up Sunday at the Inverness Park home of photographer Richard Blair and his writer/photographer wife Kathleen Goodwin. The occasion was a party to celebrate the release of their new book California Trip.

To quote from the book’s jacket, “The authors of the best-selling Point Reyes Visions have expanded their horizons to encompass the entirety of California…. Traveling thousands of miles throughout the state, they have captured its spirit with photographs that range from surfers, farmworkers, and movie stars to exquisite pictures of California’s deserts and mountains…. From the hippies and protests of the sixties to California today, the authors were there with camera and a reporter’s notebook, recording vivid details of California’s unique place in the world.”

Sunday’s guests at the Blair-Goodwin home on Inverness Ridge got a taste of that variety. Inside the home was spread a feast of shellfish and prawns, meat and poultry, salads, pasta and pastry. In the garden, guests sampled a table of California wines while on the other side of the house, some guests sat quietly at the edge of a forest and gazed out to sea at the Farallon Islands.

Meanwhile in the couple’s studio next to the house, an East Bay band named The RaveUps blasted out stunning renditions of releases by John Lee Hooker, The Animals, and other heavies while one crowd of guests danced up a sweat.

El Capitan, Clearing storm, 1971 Yosemite Valley ©Richard Blair

Richard, who grew up in New York, was a park photographer at Yosemite in the early 1970s and received an award from the Secretary of the Interior for photographing a rescue on El Capitan.

Kathleen, who celebrated her 60th birthday, as well as the book, Sunday, was born in South Africa and was a newspaper writer there. Unhappy with South Africa’s then-policy of racial apartheid, she moved to San Francisco in 1974.

California Trip is now for sale for $49.95 in stores around West Marin, which are listed at pointreyesvisions.com. Information on ordering is also available at that address or by calling 415 663-1615.

Book-signing talk-and-slide shows are scheduled for: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov.14, at The Depot Bookstore and Cafe, 87 Throckmorton Avenue, Mill Valley, (415) 383- 2665; and at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov.29, at Copperfield’s Books, 40 Kentucky St. in Petaluma, (707) 762-0563.

Lush Stream, Pfeiffer State Beach ©Richard Blair

Water Tower, Mendocino ©Richard Blair

Abandoned Drive-In with Plowed Field Central Valley ©Richard Blair

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.

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.

My houseguest’s tiny Bichon Havanese mix becomes acquainted with one of my resident raccoons. The raccoon could see the elderly dog better than the dog could see her, but neither could smell the other through the glass pane of my dining-room window, so both soon lost interest in each other.

A former neighbor, who through no fault of her own had to abruptly move out of a home on Tomasini Canyon Road, is staying at my cabin for a few weeks as she prepares to move into a new home in Santa Rosa. My houseguest, Linda Petersen, previously lived in Puerto Rico 21 years where she acquired a now-14-year-old Bichon Havanese mix, which is also staying in my cabin.

Havanese, which are related to Pekinese, were originally bred in Havana, Cuba, and this particular pup weighs less than five pounds. Sebastian is almost deaf and almost blind but still has a keen sense of smell. That’s not necessarily a good combination, for whenever the dog gets lost, it follows its nose, as long as its nose is pointing downhill.

My houseguest Linda Petersen with Sebastian the dog at the mouth of the Russian River. Ten years ago, Linda’s daughter Saskia found Sebastian hunting for garbage in the streets of a densely packed suburb of San Juan.

Linda is a horsewoman, and a day or two after she moved in, she went for a ride in the Point Reyes National Seashore and left Sebastian in my care. No problem. The old dog sleeps most of the time. After working at my computer for a while, however, I thought it best to check up on Sebastian and discovered to my dismay that he had slipped out my kitchen door and was nowhere to be seen.

I searched around my house and a neighbor’s. No Sebastian. I then drove over to Tomasini Canyon Road to see if the dog had returned to his old home. Still no Sebastian. By now I was worried that the blind-and-deaf old dog would wander onto Highway 1 where it might be too small for a motorist to see it, so I drove up and down the highway, but still no Sebastian.

As I drove back up Campolindo Road to search my hill further, I surprised an unusually large red fox that skedaddled onto neighbor Jess Santana’s property. A short ways further up the road, I spotted another neighbor, Carol Waxman, and asked her if she had seen a small dog wandering around.

As it turned out, Carol had seen Sebastian only two or three minutes earlier and took me to the place. “He ran off the road right here,” she said, pointing to the spot where I had just seen the fox disappear. That was alarming because Sebastian is far smaller than a jackrabbit and is no match for a fox.

Frantically, I crawled under nearby barbed-wire fences and through thickets of willows to look for the dog while Carol took over my search along Highway 1. The more time went by, the more I worried about the fox getting a hold of Sebastian.

And then suddenly there he was, at the edge of Jess’s driveway heading toward the home of another neighbor, George Grimm. The dog was clearly lost and seemed as happy to see me as I was to see him. As for the fox, it was probably pleased just to have me out of its thicket.

By now Sebastian has had several uneventful encounters with the wildlife on my hill although it’s not clear how much he was aware any of them.

Two blacktail fawns watch Sebastian trot past them down my driveway too blind to see them. (Photo by Linda Petersen)

State Senator Carol Midgen (center) on Sunday afternoon lent her support to a crowd of more than 50 people, who were protesting the Point Reyes National Seashore’s beginning to kill off its fallow and axis deer herds. The park began shooting deer last month, along with giving contraceptive injections to some does. The shooting has temporarily stopped but is scheduled to resume in the spring. Midgen told the group that shooting deer to eliminate the herds is unacceptable to members of the public in this region. She offered to cut red tape with State Fish and Game to facilitate the additional use of contraception to control herd sizes.