Susan Ruschmeyer and Peggy Berryhill noticed this colorful bird in their garden in Anchor Bay. Susan took the photo.
It's an adult Wilson's Warbler with a bug in its mouth. Perhaps there is a nest of chicks nearby. This warbler has a black "cap" on his head. You can listen to their calls at this link: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Wilsons_Warbler/sounds
Thanks to Susan for allowing me to share her photo with you here.
You can only see the caves at Cooks Beach, one at each end of the pocket beach, at a very low tide. Cece Case recently was able to photograph one.
Several years ago Peggy Berryhill photographed the same cave.
It certainly is beautiful! Cooks Beach has become a favorite spot for locals and visitors alike. To learn more about it, here is the link to the Redwood Coast Land Conservancy: http://www.rc-lc.org/Cooks-Beach.html
Thanks to Cece and Peggy for allowing me to share their photos with you here.
Craig Tooley was out photographing dragonflies when he came across a tiny toad, only the size of a quarter. It's a Western Toad.
Peggy Berryhill was alongside the Gualala River one summer day when she spotted hundreds of juvenile Western Toads. You can see how tiny they were by the one in her hand.
The second photo shows four tiny toads, looking like pebbles in the river. I show this photo to children as one of many reasons why people should never drive in a river or along its banks. You'd never spot these little guys.
Thanks to Craig and Peggy for allowing me to share their photos with you here.
Peggy Berryhill noticed these unusual clouds a few weeks ago. Scott Gasparian identified them as mammatus clouds, often a predictor of wild weather.
Scott wrote, "When I used to fly paragliders cross county, I found there are two sizes of clouds: those that are small and fed by an updraft, and those that get big enough to internally generate lift. We refer to the second type as 'cloud suck.'
"The normally flat bottom of the cloud starts to dome upwards as the freezing/cooling water in the clouds starts to accelerate. When the vertical column reaches up far enough to get into the really cold air zone, then we get hail, and thunder and lightning.
"If it keeps getting higher, with enough warm wet air to feed into it, tornadoes and waterspouts can spawn. If you see mammatus, and they start to rotate, duck. If moving away from you and rotating, sound the alarm. I lived in flat Missouri for a while and have seen two tornado starts, and a bunch of almosts, scary thrilling power to behold."
We Mendonomans will stick to a little hail and lightning, thank you very much.
Thanks to Peggy for allowing me to share her photo with you here, and thanks to Scott for teaching us about mammatus clouds.
Bush Honeysuckle, Lonicera involucrata, is sporting beautiful berries and flowers. Peggy Berryhill photographed these striking berries.
Bush Honeysuckle is a native plant and is also called Twinberry, for obvious reasons. When I looked this plant up on Wikipedia, the site said, "It may be edible or very unpalatable, or even poisonous." Well, let's just admire this beautiful plant and not taste the berries!
Thanks to Peggy for allowing me to share her photo with you here.