truthseqr's Journal

I somehow screwed up when setting my phone GPS to record. Ugghhhh! I hate when I do that. Had to set all locations for my Joseph Grant observations manually, to the best of my memory.

It was the day of the coyote at Ed Levin. I saw three coyotes and got some good pictures. What beautiful animals! One climbed the hill and then sat down and watched me take pictures. I was able to get recordings of the coyotes, too. That was exciting!

Some people had a doberman off-leash and off-trail. The dog was following two coyotes. I told the guy to put a leash on his dog and he cussed me out. I was wondering if the two coyotes would kill that dog?

It's been a long time since I've hiked Bear Creek Redwoods. I'd forgotten what a magical place it can be in the winter. So many beautiful mushrooms, lichens, ferns and moss.
I thought my camera's battery was fully charged, but I guess not. It ran out of juice halfway through my hike. Maybe the fact that I had to use the flash for almost all the photos drained the battery faster than usual. There were so many more things I wanted to photograph. I'll have to go back soon.

There seem to be a lot of misidentifications of Malvas in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm on a mission to learn as much as I can about these plants and help identify the observations for our area. I've been posting many observations of Malvas in the South Bay, hopefully with enough evidence for proper identification. In most cases I'm taking measurements either with a ruler or millimeter grid paper.

I've created an umbrella project with subprojects for each species in our area:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/malva-species-san-francisco-bay-area

As I gather more info, I'll create a "How to Identify..." journal post for each species along with "How to differentiate..." sections for similar species and references to Calflora, Jepson, and others.

Some things I've noticed:

• Malva multiflora (Cretan mallow) tends to grow near the Bay and waterways (e.g. Calabazas Creek).
• Malva parviflora (Cheeseweed mallow) and M. nacaeensis (Bull mallow) can be seen all along the trails at Ed. Levin County Park. They are very small plants and sometimes look the same until you inspect them closely. Some of these plants I could hold in the palm of my hand they're so small.
• Malva assurgentiflora (Island mallow) and M. subovata ssp. bicolor (Sea mallow) are mostly cultivated. There's an established population of M. assurgentiflora at Shoreline. Is it wild or cultivated? There are several M. assurgentiflora at Ulistac Natural Area, but they were planted by humans.

There's an area I hike at Ed. R. Levin County Park that seems to have an inordinate number of big mammal bones (6 deer and 6 domestic cattle since November 2020). Makes me wonder if a mountain lion lives nearby? Bones found at Ed R. Levin County Park.

There were dozens upon dozens of Black-crowned Night-Herons today at the Baylands - too many to count. I'm happy to say there were lots of juveniles, too.

There were also lots of Brown-headed Cowbirds, Ruddy Ducks, Northern Shovelers, and surprisingly, several patches of Datura.

Darn! My GPS wasn't set correctly, so I don't have accurate coordinates for my observations for Sept. 10, 2022, the last day of Gall Week 2022. Thankfully, I only covered a small area within Ulistac Natural Area, so it won't be too difficult to set approximate locations. But still... I hate when that happens.

I visited these 4 places for the City Nature Challenge 2022:
Day 1 (29-Apr-2022, 5.5 hrs): Sierra Azul OSP, Limekiln & Priest Rock Trails
This was one of the best days ever! I've never seen so many species and I even spotted some new ones (for me).

Day 2 (29-Apr-2022, 2 hrs): Sunnyvale Baylands
Took a short walk around the hill and paths by the water treatment plant to get some photos of sea birds. Saw 9 turtles sunning themselves - all native. (My feet were hurting from yesterday's 5.5 hr. hike.)

Day 3 (01-May-2022, 4 hrs): Joseph D. Grant County Park, Manzanita Trail to unnamed pond
Walked with my granddaughter Faith. She's great at spotting small things. She caught a water snake, newt babies, a tree frog, and tadpoles with her net (catch & release). It was a blast!

Day 4 (02-May-2022, 2 hrs): Ulistac Natural Area
It was an overcast windy morning. Not ideal conditions for photographing birds, plants & bugs.

Stats:
572 Observations
313 Species

Audio Recordings:
32

Identifications:
828

Event Summary:
https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/65744-thanks-so-much-sf-bay-area

My cell phone with GPS tracking app died while I was on the trail, so no GPS data was recorded. What a pain to go back to the old way of guesstimating the location of each observation!

A few days ago I noticed several latrines (collections of scat) along a Baylands Trail. Today I went back to document them. I saw 8 latrines in all along Moffett Channel. I think they might be from one or more raccoons. Whatever deposited these samples was feasting on crabs. You can see parts of the claws and shells in the scat.