Come (Butter)Fly With Me! (June 29)

The Marin Butterfly Count will be Sunday, June 29. We will meet at Kenneth "Doc" Edgar Park in Fairfax (junction of Cascade Drive and Bolinas Road) at 9:30 AM. (Click here for a Google Map).

One group will head into Cascade Canyon and one group will head to Azalea Hill to try for the Lindsey’s skippers. We’ll meet at Audubon Canyon Ranch in Volunteer Canyon for lunch around 12:30 and count there. (Click here for directions). Afterwards, we'll head over to Ring Mountain near Tiburon. (Click here for a Google Map).

Please e-mail Wendy if you can come. Bring your butterfly net if you have one (Wendy will have extras), field guides, binoculars, and lunch and liquids.

Participants over 12 (I guess that means us) are asked to contribute $3 to NABA (North American Butterfly Association). (Click here to view an 0n-line slideshow of butterfly photos).

What We Saw On the Abbott's Lagoon Hike (June 10)

Here's Wendy's list of what we saw on this hike:

BIRDS

American goldfinches (po-ta-to chip), white-crowned sparrows, osprey, California quail, great egret, red-winged blackbirds, Western grebes, HORNED LARK, pintail with duckling! When the Marin Breeding Bird Atlas was done in 1993 there were no pintails nesting at Point Reyes. In Marin it was “an uncommon, very local breeder” with 4 confirmed nests, 8 possible and 2 probable. One of the “possibles” was on Drakes estero. FEMALE SNOWY PLOVER ON NEST!

FLOWERS (CAPS MEANS NEW FLOWER FOR THIS CLASS THIS SEASON)

YELLOW

Yellow bush lupine, BRASS BUTTONS (S.African), CA poppies (not so orange here!), potentilla aka cinqefoil, seep-spring monkeyflower, BEACH EVENING PRIMROSE, YELLOW SAND VERBENA, LARGE MARSH BUTTERCUP

WHITE

Spring snow (Pink family), yarrow, cow parsnip (scientific name Heracleum for Hercules because it’s so big), poison hemlock (red spots on stem are “Socrates’ blood”), CA blackberry, wild radish (also lavender and yellow), HELIOTROPE (white to purplish), BROWNIE THISTLE, baby stars

PINK/MAGENTA

Salmonberry (some berries already), POINT REYES CHECKERBLOOM (endangered), Siberian candyflower (candy cane stripes), EUROPEAN SEA ROCKET (AKA horned sea rocket), cow clover, cobweb thistles

PURPLE/LAVENDAR

Douglas iris, lupine, asters, GIANT COASTAL HEDGE NETTLE, GROUND BRODIAEA, short and pale version of Ithuriel’s spear, blue-eyed grass, prunella (self-heal)

RED

Sheep sorrel, Indian paintbrush

ORANGE

Scarlet pimpernel (non-native)

NO FLOWERS

Horsetails, notch leafed pennywort (thick under bridge), SPINY SANDMAT, WILLOW-LEAFED DOCK, COYOTE THISTLE, SAND SPINEFLOWER (List 1, endangered)

BUTTERFLIES

POINT REYES BLUE (ENDANGERED! Host plant lupines.) Painted lady. About that green butterfly – the Bramble Hairstreak has been split into species, the COAST GREEN (host plant buckwheats and Ceanothus) which is what we saw, and the Bramble (Callophrys perplexa for those who are perplexed about this split) which is mostly in chapparral.

OTHER INSECTS

TIGER BEETLES (including mating pair), a dead BUMBLEBEE SCARAB BEETLE (ENDANGERED!) Most active May and June between 10 AM and 1 PM. This species, Lichnanthe ursina occurs from Sonoma to San Mateo.) SAND WASPS ( Genus Bembix, maybe species comata)

MAMMALS

2 WEASELS! We have both long-tailed and short-tailed weasels in our area. The short-tailed is the one that gets a white coat in the mountains in the winter and is called an ermine (also the one called a stoat in England). Marin is the southern end of its range.

Short-tailed: active day and night, eats mainly mice and small ground nesting birds. Black on tail is distal third. Mate late summer, delayed implantation so 4-8 young are born the following spring.

Long tailed weasel: black tail tip. Can kill rabbits several times their own weight, but prefer rodents (loves rats!) and birds. In mating remain clasped for two hours or more. Uses hollow log or old squirrel nest. Young weigh 3 grams at birth! Weaned at 5 weeks.

I didn’t get a good enough look at amount of black on tail to say for sure which we saw, but I’m guessing long-tailed Deer mouse.

(Click here if you want to view and print a copy of this list. If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer you can print the document. Once you see the document on the "Scribd" Web site, click on the "Download" icon and then on the "PDF" icon to open the document on your computer).

"Gone Fishing"

Due to an aching back, Dick missed the Laguna Trailhead hike on Tuesday (June 3rd) and he'll be in Seattle on June 10th (Abbott's Lagoon Hike), so there won't be much in the way of new "Meandering in Marin" blog posts and additions to the on-line photo album until later in the summer.

Wendy will be out of town vacationing as well from June 14-24, but promises to get the July schedule out to us in the next few days.

Weather Forecast for Abbot's Lagoon Hike (June 10)

Good news --- as of Thursday, June 5th, the National Weather Service is forecasting pleasant spring-like weather with sunny skies and a high near 59 degrees at Drake's Beach for Tuesday, June 10th, when we do our Abbott's Lagoon Hike. With luck, the temperate will be a little higher in our area. (Click here for an updated forecast).

Abbott's Lagoon Hike (June 10) Preview

The fourth of our summer series of hikes in West Marin will take us back out to Point Reyes National Seashore for a sojourn near Abbott's Lagoon. Wendy says that: "On this lovely level walk we should see yellow sand verbena, beach evening primrose, giant coastal hedge nettle, cobweb thistle, heliotrope, Point Reyes checkerbloom (endangered), and maybe the endangered beach layia. We'll also check out birds on the lagoon and the ocean. Brush rabbits and muskrats are possible. Learn about the endangered snowy plovers that nest on this beach. Lunch on the beach."

Here are the directions to the trailhead (carpool leaves St. Rita at 8:45):

Take Sir Francis Drake Blvd. Turn right at Olema and make an immediate left onto Bear Valley Rd. Continue until you pick up SF Drake again. Go through Inverness. Where the road veers left to Drake's Beach and the lighthouse go straight. This puts you on Pierce Point Rd. Pass Tomales Bay State Park. The parking area for Abbott's Lagoon will be on your left. Restrooms at trailhead.

Regardless of the exact route we take on the hike, this excerpt from the Martin's book, Hiking Marin, shows the trails in this part of the seashore:



(Click here to view and print out the hike details and map from the Martin book. If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer you can print the document. Once you see the document on the "Scribd" Web site, click on the "Download" icon and then on the "PDF" icon to open the document on your computer).

New! Riding The Rails on Mount Tam

Click on this link to view a "You Tube" video clip about the Mount Tam Railroad from the 1976 film "The Crookedest Railroad In The World" produced by San Rafael High School teacher David Swingle and his students for the Marin County American Revolution Bicentennial Commission. The clip runs just under nine and a half minutes.

What We Saw on The Bear Valley to Five Brooks Hike

Here's what Wendy lists as our sightings on the Bear Valley to Five Brooks hike on May 27th:

FLOWERS

Pink: foxglove (also white, non-native), Pacific star flower, honeysuckle (vine)

Red: bee plant, fringe cups

Yellow: tarweed, lotus sp.

White: cow parsnip, milkmaids (still!)

Orange: poppies, scarlet pimpernel (not native)

Purple: blue-eyed grass, wally basket, HARVEST BRODIAEA (somewhat like wally basket but flowers open one at a time), Doulgas iris

OTHER PLANTS

Poison oak getting berries, lots of stinging nettles, red elderberry getting berries though they’re still green

BIRDS:

barn swallows, turkey vultures, California quail WITH BABIES (they're supposed to have 12-16 so that one group must have been two families), chestnut backed chickadee, mallards, dark-eyed juncos, red-tailed hawk, red-winged blackbirds, Brewer’s blackbirds, starling, turkey WITH BABIES, black phoebe, CA towhee, song sparrows, American robins

Heard: olive-sided flycatchers (what PEEVES you), winter wren (long song with circular breathing), warbling vireo (often ends warbler with a question, on an up note), Pacific slope flycatcher (chee-weep), Wilson’s warbler, song sparrow (usually starts with 3 introductory notes), Swainson’s thrush

BUTTERFLIES

Acmon blues (host plants buckwheats and lotuses), Western tiger swallowtail (host plants willows and alders), Lorquin’s admiral (ocean spray and willows), California ringlets, vained white

DRAGONFLIES

CARDINAL MEADOWHAWK (red), MALE WESTERN PONDHAWK (blue, clear wings)

DAMSELFLIES

Dancer sp.

TREES

hazel trees with nuts, BOX ELDER

FUNGI

Red belted conk, artist’s conk (on bay), sunny-side-ups (very odd for May)

(Click here if you want to view and print a copy of this list. If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer you can print the document. Once you see the document on the "Scribd" Web site, click on the "Download" icon and then on the "PDF" icon to open the document on your computer).

Weather Forecast for Laguna Trailhead Hike (June 3)

As of Sunday, June 1st at 9:27 a.m., the National Weather Service forecast for Drakes Beach (the closest reporting point to where we'll be hiking) for Tuesday, June 3rd, is for partly sunny skies with a high near 53, and breezy conditions with a northwest wind between 17 and 22 mph, gusting as high as 28 mph. (Click here for an updated forecast).

However, when we're away from the beach area near Limantour and out of the wind temperatures are likely to be somewhat higher (the forecast for Bear Valley/Olema that afternoon is for a high of 65). As usual, bring some layers to put on and take off as the weather varies during the hike.