Sunday’s Western Weekend Parade packed the main street of Point Reyes Station, making it look like half the residents around Tomales Bay were either watching the parade or in it.

A Coast Guard color guard led the parade, followed by Marin County and Inverness fire engines. Several parade entries, including an inflatable boat from the Coast Guard base in Bodega Bay, had maritime themes.

The good ship Mary Kay’s Revenge from Marshall. The Point Reyes Light on Thursday reported, “The boat is constructed largely of recycled sail cloth, plywood and pallets” and had been sitting “on Peggy Bannan’s porch in Reynold’s Cove” while awaiting the parade.

Parade Marshal Maidee Moore of Inverness received a ride from Dennis Luftig of Point Reyes Station. Maidee has long been active in civic affairs and is perhaps best known for decades of leading a program, Tomales Bay Waterdogs, which teaches children living around Tomales Bay how to swim.

Western Weekend Queen Mindy Borello, 17, rode in a pickup-truck carriage during Sunday’s parade. Mindy won the queen contest by selling the most Western Weekend raffle tickets.

Western Weekend Princess Rocio Gomez  Together Rocio and Mindy sold more than $8,000 worth of raffle tickets.

The float was called “The Hula Hoopin’ Haley Grandkids,” and this grandkid was a pro.

Three quarters of a century  Inverness Garden Club’s entry each year includes numerous participants, a motorcycle with a sidecar, and a float festooned with flowers and greenery. This year the club is celebrating its 75th anniversary, hence the birthday cake. Among the club’s activities is maintaining flower beds in public places.

Several kids on mini-motorcycles took part in the parade. This young biker may be new to the parade circuit, but he has already learned its protocol. To get the attention of other kids along the parade route carry a bag of candies and toss out handfuls. Works every time.

Papermill Creek Children’s Corner (a preschool in Point Reyes Station) and Marin Head Start paraded together.

Planned Feralhood president Kathy Runnion of Nicasio, dressed as a cat and festooned with toy kittens, led her group’s parade entry. The group catches feral cats in Point Reyes Station and neuters or spays them.

Kathy finds homes for the kittens and as many of the adults as possible. A few adults cannot be domesticated and are returned to the street, but at least they are no longer reproducing. Not surprisingly, the number of feral kittens around town has dropped dramatically.

West Marin School students dance a Paso Durangeneze. The group includes Alejandro Chavarria, 3rd grade; Graciela Avalos, Sarahisabel Barajaz, Stepanie Gonzalez, William Gonzalez, Shelby Hunt, Normar Isais, Bianca Lima, and Phoebe Marshall, 4th graders; and Armando Gonzalez, 5th grade. Their teacher is Dolores Gonzalez.

The Nave Patrola annually spoofs the Italian Army in World War I although it also borrows an “Il Duce” chant from World War II.

In the early 1970s, an official from the Italian Consulate in San Francisco complained to parade organizers, the West Marin Lions Club, that the patrol disparaged Italians, what with its seemingly confused marchers colliding with each other and going off in all directions.

Defenders of the patrol, however, replied that many of the members are of Italian descent. In addition, most folks here find Benito Mussolini, “the Duce of Fascism,” as he called himself, fair game for satire.

Bikini-clad dancers on an entry from Very Nice Firewood of Point Reyes Station waved placards that said, “Joe’s Knows How to Keep It Hot,” along with “Keep Warm & Toasty” and “Got Wood?”

A highlight of every Western Weekend Parade is the impressive Concord Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps, which participates in numerous parades each year. Based in Contra Costa County, the Blue Devils are a world-class drum corps, having won 12 Drum Corps International championships in the past 33 years.

The Western Weekend Livestock Show and Fair were held Saturday at the Dance Palace for the second year, having been held for more than half a century at the Red Barn (whose current owner has renamed it and repainted it green).

William Nunes’ four-year-old dry Holstein took first place in junior showmanship while Alyssa McClure’s heifer took second.

Thoroughly enjoying the livestock show were the dogs of Lisa Patsel, who owns Tree House bed-and-breakfast inn.

Because the number of ranches in West Marin has been steadily shrinking, the number of entries is now tiny compared with what it was back in the 1960s and 1970s.

Half a dozen cows were shown this year compared to 100 in 1962, but youths in the ranching families that still remain take the competition as seriously as ever.

4-H Club members recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the 4-H pledge at the beginning of Saturday’s livestock show.

Michelle McClure took first place in senior showmanship for Holstein cows, and Nathan Hemett took second.

Kelly Hinde of Sonoma County 4-H judges rabbits during the 4-H fair.

Freddie Genazzi’s red slider named Ozzie took first place in the turtle competition. Although his sister wasn’t present, her turtle, whom the judge dubbed Harriet, took second.

Judge Hinde inspects a pair of mice.

Judges Ellie Genazzi and Terry Gray compare notes during the Western Weekend Fair’s dog show.

Amelia McDonald’s dog Hamlet clears a hurdle in an obstacle course during the dog show.

While the obstacle course confused all the dogs that went on it, this Dumpster behind the Dance Palace confused virtually all the humans who went to use it.

My 22-year-old stepdaughter has never seen The Red Couch book, perhaps because it was published 25 years ago, yet last weekend on a lark she unknowingly echoed it while visiting West Marin. The Red Couch consists of photos of folks sitting on a red couch that had been taken to unlikely locales throughout the US, ranging from the floor of a stock exchange, to a desert, to an urban park. Here’s the story of the echo.

My stepdaughter Anika Zappa, who currently is working and going to college in Minneapolis, was my houseguest for five days this past week, and on Saturday she went shopping in Novato with her traveling companion Adam Pendergraft.

While driving on Novato Boulevard between Hicks Valley and Stafford Lake, Anika was startled to see a purple couch abandoned on the shoulder of the road. (Since then I’ve heard from others who also saw it and were likewise surprised.)

The site seemed “very random,” she later told me, and the couch “was purple, so it totally caught my eye.”

When she drove back from Novato a couple of hours later, “I saw it again,” she said, “and I pulled over, jumped out, and shot a whole bunch of pictures of it.

“It was cool because the couch was purple; the pasture was green behind it; and blue skies.”

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Anika Zappa and Adam Pendergraft in their roadside living room. You can see a few photos from The Red Couch Project, which Anika inadvertantly echoed, by clicking here. Unfortunately, using the site is trifle awkward, and its creator apparently doesn’t know the meaning of the word cliché, let alone how to spell it (regardless of the accent mark).

Although she is now attending college in Minnesota, Anika grew up in Guatemala where her mother and two sisters still live. In 2003, while all of us were living in Point Reyes Station, Anika at 16 began contributing writing and photography to The Point Reyes Light.

Her most-impressive contributions were shot in the Guatemala City airport. They sensitively documented the confused emotions of an injured Guatemalan laborer and of his family as he arrived home after being beaten nearly to death in Bolinas. The pictures were part of a series that in 2004 won top state and national honors for public service journalism.

She’s been a photographer ever since, and last semester, Anika proudly told me, “I Aced my photography class.”

Behind the couch on the shoulder of Novato Boulevard is Dave Lavaroni’s ranch. Passing motorists “were curious what we were doing,” Anika reported with amusement, “and probably thought we took the couch there.”

Saturday evening two more houseguests arrived at my cabin, Janine Warner and her husband Dave LaFontaine from Los Angeles. They are Internet-media consultants, and Janine herself was a prize-winning reporter at The Light 18 years ago.

As she posed on the couch, Anika noted, ‘people honked, and a truck came around twice to see what we were doing. A bicyclist yelled [encouragement].’

“I was showing Janine the photos I had taken that day,” Anika said. “We were talking about what kind of photography interests me, and I said ‘composition.’ And she said, ‘What would you do with this couch?’ I said I just bought a yellow dress, and I’d put someone in a yellow dress on it, with a lamp and some flowers.

“She was intrigued and said, ‘Let’s do it tomorrow.’ I really didn’t think it would go. I thought we’d be busy with something else. I had just met her, so I didn’t know if it was a ‘Let’s go’ for real,” Anika later admitted.

But the next morning, Janine said, “When are we shooting the couch?” and the two of them, along with Adam and Dave, “started doing a scavenger hunt around the house for props. We started thinking about the colors.”

Anika has studied photography at San Marin High, as well as in college, and in choosing props, she said, “one thing that helped a lot is that in both photography classes, the first thing we did was work with a color wheel.”

Janine Warner and Dave LaFontaine take a break from Saturday’s photo shoot. Janine took all the photos here except this one while Dave helped with setups.

Janine said, “‘You have the yellow dress. This can be a self-portrait.’ She let my creative mind go.” Janine’s husband Dave is an old hand at setting up photo shoots, and eventually all three were brainstorming about the project.

After shooting a number of photos that made use of the couch as it was placed, “Adam and I moved the couch around, so we could get a view of the road as well,” Anika noted, explaining that what made the scene interesting was the couch’s being beside Novato Boulevard.

Anika later laughed about having to contend with a “wardrobe malfunction” (one strap to her new dress broke) as she struck various poses on the couch.

The shoot took about an hour and a half, “and the sun was perfect because it was not too bright,” Anika said.

“I had a good time doing it and letting my creative side out. And it was fun being on both sides of the lens.” When the photos were later downloaded onto a computer, she added, “it was awesome seeing on the screen the thing I had in my head.”

My thrill at seeing a badger close to my cabin a couple of weeks ago was renewed Sunday when I saw two. A mother badger (known as a “sow”), along with her cub (sometimes known as a “kit”), was sunning herself on the mound of dirt around their burrow (known as a “sett”).

Adult badgers are similar to raccoons in length and weight but are noticeably shorter. Although badgers excavated a couple of setts in my pasture earlier this spring, the mound seen here is on the adjoining Giacomini family land. I’ve now shown this family to three of my neighbors, all of whom were surprised to learn there were badgers denning nearby.

Badgers live in burrows up to 30 feet long and 10 feet deep, for they are remarkably efficient diggers thanks to long claws and short, strong legs.  Although they can run up to 17 or 18 mph for short distances, they generally hunt by digging fast enough to pursue rodents into their burrows.

It is not uncommon for badgers to take over the burrows of prey they’ve eaten, so the overabundance of gophers on this hill could explain all the setts.

Badgers belong to the Mustelidae family, which also includes wolverines, otters, and weasels. Like skunks, which once were considered part of that family, badgers have perineal glands that emit quite a stench. What with the stench, the claws, and extremely strong jaws, adult badgers can hold their own against any potential attackers, including bears and coyotes, although they’d rather hide.

And while coyotes and badgers have been observed fighting over prey, they have also been observed “hunting together in a cooperative fashion,” Wikipedia reports, citing a 1950 article in The Journal of Mammalogy.

Although badgers are hunted in some parts of the United States and the rest of the world, in this state, the California Department of Fish and Game has protected them as a “species of special concern” for more than 30 years.

I’ve see badgers for sale as food in a Guangzhou, China, marketplace. And badgers were once a staple of the Native American, as well as colonial, diet. Even today they’re commonly eaten in France, Russia, and other European countries, as well as China.

Around here, however, the most-common form of badger consumption is as shaving brushes.

The badger’s stiff bristles have long been considered ideal for both shaving and paint brushes. These days most of the hair is imported from China.

“Badgers mate in late summer,” notes the Parks Canada website. “However, the fertilized egg does not implant into the uterus and begin to develop until February. This delayed implantation’ means that breeding can occur in the summer when the adults are most active, and young are born in the spring when food is abundant.

“Two to five furry blind kits are born around April. [ N.B. These dates apply in Canada, and judging from the size of the cub I saw, births may be somewhat earlier in West Marin.] They live off their mother’s milk until August when they strike off to establish their own home range.”

Leaving home is a hair-raising transition for young badgers as they learn how to fend for themselves and not become somebody’s food or shaving brush. Many don’t survive.

“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.

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.

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.

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.