Lake Lagunitas Wildlife

While taking his broken leg out for a "test hike" around Lake Lagunitas on Saturday, Dick Jordan and his wife found newts swimming and mating in a stream feeding into a lake, and a Pileated Woodpecker carving out a hole in a nearby dead tree.

Regrettably, Dick's little point-and-shoot camera didn't let him get very clear photos of either the newts (particularly of the cavorting newt couple, which two small kids erroneously decided where a mother and baby rather than a mother-to-be and her consort) or the woodpecker. But you can find a better photo of newt conjugal relations, plus everything you ever wanted to know about newts and salamanders, in this article from the Jan-Mar 2013 issues of Bay Nature magazine.

You may still be able to find the newts just beyond the bend in the stream after crossing the first bridge on the trail as you walk counter-clockwise (they way we Meanderers do on our hike around Pilot Knob) from the dam.

 The Pileated Woodpecker should be just uphill to the south from that spot, along an unnamed trail that appears to dead-end, and which Dick could only find on old C.E. Erickson map of Mount Tam. If you walk up that trail (which does have an MMWD trail sign, but no trail name), turn around, and look to your right, you should have a decent look at the woodpecker's hole in the snag.