Sightings

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Eric Duff was at Cooks Beach when he photographed this beautiful sunset.

Cooks Beach is just north of the town of Gualala. You can learn more about this wonderful pocket beach at the Redwood Coast Land Conservancy's website at this link: https://www.rclc.org/what-we-do/cooks-beach/ I'm such a fan of RCLC.

Deborah Vanderwoude noticed this unusual cloud recently and said she thought it looked like a bird, which I can see. I also thought it looked like an angel if you looked at it another way.

Thanks to Eric and Deborah for allowing me to share their photos with you here.

We are having a spectacular warm day on the Mendonoma Coast today.

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Some dogs love to play in the surf, and that's what Rozanne Rapozo recently captured with her camera. Looks like a beautiful husky to me. Do you agree?

Thanks to Rozanne for allowing me to share her photo with you here.

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Before the February heatwave arrived, we had a pretty awesome fog bank over the ocean and on the immediate bluffs. Tricia Schuster photographed the sight on The Sea Ranch.

It almost looks menacing, doesn't it? But it was just a gentle fog bank, nothing to worry about!

Thanks to Tricia for allowing me to share her photo with you here.

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I love seeing Northern Flickers. I often see them coming to neighbors' springs to get water. Craig Tooley recently photographed a male Flicker.

The red "whiskers" tells us this is a male and is the Red-shafted form of Flickers, the ones found here in the west. Their call is distinctive and you can hear it at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology site at this link: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Flicker/sounds

Northern Flickers use their big beaks to dig in the ground, unearthing ants and beetles, their preferred food.

Thanks to Craig for allowing me to share his photo with you here. To see much more of Craig's nature photography, here is the link to his website: http://www.ruffimage.com

Another sunny, unseasonably warm day. Really, it's quite lovely but it's just not right for February. But what else can we do but enjoy the warm breezes and bright blue sky?! News flash! Scott and Tree Mercer saw the first NORTH-bound Gray Whale on Monday, Feb. 7th, just about on schedule. The first to head back to the Arctic are the newly pregnant females. They need to get to their feeding grounds as fast as possible. Gray Whales are arriving to the birthing lagoons off Baja California not. So, yes, the grays are coming and going!

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Chris Swarth witnessed a Bobcat successfully hunting a Pocket Gopher. Chris wrote, “I snapped this photo from my kitchen window in The Sea Ranch near the airport. I’d been watching the Bobcat crouched motionless with twitching tail, nose in the grass, for one to two minutes. I grabbed my camera and a few seconds later watched as the Bobcat snatched the gopher from its hole and walked toward me. The Bobcat then sat nearby in the shade and within a few minutes had consumed its prey. It was a large gopher, probably a male.”

I noticed the Pocket Gopher had something in its mouth and queried Chris about it, mentioning the photo shows the food chain in action. Chris wrote, “Yes, the gopher does hold a bit of grass or other plant in its mouth. At the base of this plant, at the gopher’s mouth, at first I thought this was a small bulb. But now I think that this light spot is a bit of distended cheek pouch – the ‘pocket’ which gives the gopher its name: the Pocket Gopher.”

Thanks to Chris for allowing me to share his photo with you here.

Warm with absolutely no wind, and clouds overhead...it sure seems strange for February.