Category: Photography

The Wildlands Will Recover

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Near the start of Winter Break, I was able to tag along on a walk-through of Crane Creek Regional Park, hosted by Hattie Brown of the Sonoma County Regional Parks, and John Parodi, with Point Blue Conservation Science. The primary reason for the trip was to discuss opportunities for students to get involved in fire recovery research, as parts of the park burned in the Nuns Fire last October. We did come up with some great ideas for student research, which I’ll talk more about during the Spring semester, when the research will be happening. For now, I thought I’d share some of my photos from that day.

The thing that struck me most is how undamaged most of the park appears. Already, the landscape is green, and there are very few obvious signs of the fire. As Hattie said while we were walking, “the wildlands will recover.”

Wildlife on Copeland Creek

- Wendy St. John Leave a comment

On Saturday, March 25th, SSU collaborated with the California Conservation Corps’ Watership Stewardship Program to start work on our riparian restoration project (more details about the work we did on Saturday coming soon). One of the side benefits of working alongside the creek is encountering some of the wildlife that shares the campus with us. Here are a few of the highlights of our day . . .

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Salmonid Field Trip

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Restoration Ecology’s final field trip of the Fall, 2016 semester was a wonderful adventure in the redwoods, looking at restoration projects aimed at restoring habitat for salmonid fishes, including chinook and coho salmon. Our hosts for the day were Sarah Phillips of the Marin Resource Conservation Department (RCD), Erik Young, a lawyer affiliated with Trout Unlimited, and Eric Ettlinger of the Marin Water District. Each of them shared with us a different perspective on the creek, and how restoration projects happen.

We started out in the Leo T. Cronin parking area for a brief introduction, and then we headed a bit downstream of the lot for our first close-up look at Lagunitas Creek.

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Fostering Rodents

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Here are some photos of a couple of my foster babies from a few years ago. Meet Gizmo, the vole, and Mortimer, the Deer Mouse. (There’s only one photo of Mortimer, when he was just SO tiny). Both of these babies were brought into the local wildlife rescue center (where I worked at the time as a feeder for all the rehab and ambassador animals), and I agreed to foster them. I don’t have a big enough place to foster larger mammals, like raccoons and squirrels, but tiny rodents? That I could do. I syringe-fed both of them several times a day (and during the night, at first), and they were both so incredibly precious. Gizmo was released by me into a local county park (Crane Creek; pictured below). Mortimer ended up self-releasing (in other words, he escaped. :D). I trust that both of them led happy, healthy lives. At least I hope that they did.

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Songbird Hospital

- Wendy St. John Leave a comment

Guess what I did today! *hint: the pictures are a clue*

Cliff Swallow
White-throated Swift
Pygmy Nuthatch
Western Bluebird and Pacific-slope Flycatchers

Yes, I spent the afternoon feeding baby birds! For the past four years, I’ve volunteered at a local wildlife rehabilitation center where we work almost exclusively with songbirds. This is the first shift I’ve worked this summer, because I’ve been busy with turtle stuff. But today, I finally made it out there, and I got to spend the day feeding the most adorable babies! (These aren’t the actual babies I fed; this is a compliation of some of the pictures I’ve taken in past years. But they’re representative of the different species I worked with today).

Today, I fed western bluebirds, white swifts, vaux’ swifts, mockingbirds, a black-headed grosbeak, American robins and four species of swallows (cliff, barn, violet-green, and rough-winged), and Pacific-slope flycatchers.

SO CUTE! Their little faces, their huge gaping mouths! I probably won’t do a whole lot of shifts this year, but I’m going back again next weekend. Because, BABIES!!!! (And also because the woman who runs the hospital is a good friend, and I like helping her out). Plus, BABIES!

 

CNPS Field Trip

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Went on a field trip today with the local native grasslands society (California Native Plant Society), although the site we visited was already very familiar to me – it’s our Western Pond Turtle field site in Lake County, California. It was different being up there and *not* looking for turtles. I learned some things about plants (which is good; I’m ridiculously ignorant about plants), saw and heard a bunch of great birds (including pileated woodpeckers and MOUNTAIN QUAIL! Only the second time in my whole life I’ve ever seen mountain quail).

The star of the day, however, was this little ring-necked snake. Such beautiful colors. Now I’m really looking forward to the start of my field season less than a month from now.

Lupine

 

Emerging Baby Turtles!

- Wendy St. John 1 Comment

Last week, my lab partner and I went out to our field site to see if last year’s hatchlings had emerged yet from their nests. The female pond turtles lay their eggs in the early summer (June is the most active month at our site), and the eggs hatch approximately three months later. There is evidence that young don’t leave the nest, though, until after the winter, something we were able to confirm on our excursion today!

We were fortunate in being at the site at exactly the right time this year. We visited a few of the nests we’d located last summer, and found babies emerging from some of them. The sort of blurry photo shows the hole they had dug for themselves to emerge – I know it’s a crappy photo, but that really is a baby turtle inside. We also found a couple that were just in the process of coming out of the ground. It was a pretty amazing thing to witness.

Fairfield Osborn Preserve

- Wendy St. John Leave a comment

This week, I took my students on a field trip to one of my university’s nature preserves. Our primary goal was to survey some trees for Sudden Oak Death, but I never go to the preserve without the supplemental goal of making wildlife observations, especially since there are always at least a few students who tell me that this trip is the first time they’ve ever gone hiking in some sort of “natural” or wilderness area. I’ll combine photos from both days (I have multiple classes, so came out on two days).

The star of the show was this Rough-skinned Newt (Taricha granulosa), which I was able to locate on both day. I also loved this Southern Alligator Lizard (Elgaria multicarinata), Giant Wakerobin (Trillium chloropetalum), Pacific Chorus Frog (Pseudacris regilla), and Western Fence Lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis). I also found some gorgeously-colored Golden Ear (Naematelia aurantia) that appeared to be growing on False Turkey-tail (Stereum hirsutum).