Morning glow

  

Sunrise from Cotati on 31 October 2023.

Smiling squash

  

Happy Halloween!

Moon of the first frost

  

Full moon, 28 October 2023, rising over the hills in Bodega Bay.  

I was reading about the many names for this month's full moon and when I came across the "Moon of the first frost" it felt right.  It's been chilly here during the last couple of nights!

The golden hour

Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) in the early evening on 24 October 2023.

Atmospheric

  

 Half moon and sunset clouds from Cotati, 21 October 2023

A bit of swell

  

A bit of wave splash today (19 October 2023).  The offshore buoy was reporting ~11 foot swell late in the day.

For scale, that's a Brown Pelican perched on the bluff in the upper right corner of the photo.  [You can click on the image for a larger version.]

Above and below

  

Fog at the horizon, 16 October 2023

Crescent sun

  

I thought it was going to be too foggy for us to see the solar eclipse this morning, so I almost forgot to look for it.  Luckily our neighbor was in the yard checking it out.  Some of the clouds opened up a bit just in time, so I snapped a quick photo for the record.  

Partial solar eclipse photographed (with a filter) from Cotati at 9:20 a.m. on 14 October 2023.

Tropical sound

  

The lighting was tough, but here's a quick shot of a Tropical Kingbird (Tyrannus melancholicus) photographed near the Bodega Marine Laboratory today (13 October 2023).

This kingbird was calling, so I recorded a short audio clip, too.  (If you are reading this in an e-mail and can't see the audio player below, click here to go directly to the NHBH website to listen to the audio clip.]

nhbh · Tropical Kingbird 2023.10.13

Fun!

Stranded on shore

 

 

It's been a while since we've seen pyrosomes washing up on local beaches, but Eric photographed this one today, 12 October 2023.  It was ~5 cm long.

 

For an introduction to pyrosomes, see the post called "Fire bodies" on 8 December 2014.

 

P.S. If you happen to see any other pyrosomes washing up, I'd be interested in hearing about your observations!

 

Morning sun

  

Cedar Waxwings in the morning sun, photographed in Cotati on 10 October 2023.

Driftwood shelter

 

 

Semipalmated Plovers (Charadrius semipalmatus) among driftwood, 7 October 2023.

Taking off

 

 

A young Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) taking off after hunting for sparrows in a shrub, 7 October 2023.

Offshore spouts

  

A distant shot, but I wanted to record that there have been good numbers of Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) off Bodega Head this week -- often 6-8 spouts or more visible across the horizon at any one time.  (And lots of pelican diving, too!)

Silky skies

  

Silk!  After hearing about Eric's dragonfly and butterfly observations last night, I was scanning the San Francisco Chronicle headlines and noticed an unusual one -- something like "Baby spiders are falling from the sky..."  

Young spiders drift on silk threads to disperse to new areas, and there were reports from the Bay Area of clumps of silk both in the sky and on the ground.   I wondered if they were in Sonoma County, too, so while eating lunch today we kept an eye out and sure enough, we saw several clumps of silk crossing our view.

Then I went out to try to photograph a few for the record and these are the results.  Often there was a larger, denser clump of silk at the end of a very narrow thread-like strand:

 

 

I was photographing these bundles of silk almost directly overhead and they were fairly high up, so I couldn't always see the entire streamer at the time.  I was impressed to see how long some of them were when I started to review the photos.  Look carefully to see how far the slender threads extend from the clump:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many of the concentrated clumps of silk were about half the size of my palm.  And I estimate the lengths of the strands in these photos range from ~2 feet (0.5 meter) to ~5 feet (1.5 meters) long.  

 

I wondered if you could find a spider in the silk, so I walked briefly to check for silk on nearby vegetation.  I found several, but I didn't have any luck finding a spider.

I'm curious about why these silk balloons are so prominent this year.  Is it a certain species of spider?  Or are spiders producing more silk this year for some reason?  Or are there just more of them this year so they are more noticeable?  Or was it something about the weather that caused larger clumps of silk to form?  Hmmphhh!

Dragonfly movement at the coast

 

 

I was away at a meeting this week, but Eric was in Bodega Bay and observed a significant movement of dragonflies (and some butterflies) along the coast today (4 October 2023).  He caught and photographed a couple of them to document which species were involved.

 

Pictured above is a male Variegated Meadowhawk (Sympetrum corruptum).  Below is an example of a female:

 

 

 

Eric counted ~40 dragonflies/minute flying south along the outer coast of Bodega Head at ~10:45 a.m.  I was curious about the weather conditions at the time.  I knew it had been warm, but I didn't know how warm!

 

There are several weather stations on Bodega Head.  I checked the first and didn't believe my eyes because it had peaked at ~87°F (~30°C) today.  So I checked a second and it also read ~87°F!  Then to be sure I checked a third (and the one I generally consider the most accurate) and it peaked at ~85°F (~29°C).  Amazing!  Air temperatures that high are quite rare on Bodega Head.

 

There was also an unusual spike in air temperature this morning.  It started out in the 50s this morning, but then rose steadily to 70°F at 10 a.m. and continued to rise significantly until reaching ~85°F at noontime.  Then it plummeted back to ~70°F for the rest of the afternoon.  (The wind direction also changed with the temperature pattern, from north/northeast then veering to west.)

 

More hot temperatures are expected tomorrow, so it'll be interesting to see if there are more movements of insects at the coast.