Today's rain filled our bird bath...and then a flock of Bushtits (Psaltriparus minimus) came by and enjoyed a bath. Bushtits seem to do everything together, so there was lots of splashing!
Most of the time, foraging Bushtit flocks move through our yard fairly quickly, so it was nice to see them pause, if only for a minute, and enjoying the rain.
Wow! This weekend, Eric looked out the back door and noticed this adult Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) sitting on a post in the garden.
The hawk spent quite a bit of time hunting...landing on tomato cages and walking among the plants. We're assuming it was focused on finding a songbird. Impressive to see it up close and to watch its behavior!
Here's another view:
Okay, back to these little snails that I posted on 27 January 2024!
This would have been a challenging one to identify unless you've spent some time looking at vermetid gastropods, or tube snails. These are newly hatched Petaloconchus montereyensis!
And if you haven't heard of tube snails — yes, that's right, these are snails that don't crawl (at least as adults) and instead live in a calcareous tube that's cemented in place.
This species of tube snail is a brooder — the adults lay egg capsules inside their tubes and the juveniles hatch and crawl away. They only crawl for a brief time before attaching to the substrate — e.g., a rock surface or the tube of an adult. (They tend to be gregarious.)
One of these snails settled after only two days. In the video below you can see the tiny juvenile (only ~2 mm across) with the new tube that it produced. And if you look very carefully you can see the coiled shell that it started out with at the very base of the tube! So cool!
As adults these snails are attached to the substrate, so they feed in a different way than many common marine snails. Instead of grazing on algae on the rocks or in tidepools, Petaloconchus feeds by casting a mucous net into the water, letting organic material get caught in the net, then pulling the net back into its mouth. The snail uses its radula (like a tongue with rows of sharp teeth) to retrieve the net. Eric captured some video of that feeding motion, too, so he included it in this clip. This is pretty spectacular footage of tube snails, so be sure to check it out!
The video sequence goes something like this:
Thanks for the terrific video, Eric!
If you're interested in the identity of the snail I posted about last night, I'm going to delay the answer by one day — mostly because there might be more footage we can share, but it's not quite ready yet. For now, I hope you enjoy this beautiful Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa)!
Air temperatures reached 68°F on Cotati today (and I heard that Santa Rosa reached 72°F, tying a record for the date). Around mid-day Eric spotted a Mourning Cloak in our backyard, but it flew off before I could take a photo. So I went for a short walk down the street to a spot where I thought it would possible to see another one, and sure enough there were two Mourning Cloaks there sunning in a wet wooded area.
This is one of my favorite butterflies, but I don't see them that often. I love the deep mahogany color above and the beautiful gold and blue combination along the wing margins. And they look completely different when the wings are closed, more like a dark leaf or piece of bark:
Pretty cute, huh? Eric filmed these two juvenile marine snails tonight. They're only ~1 mm long. He put together a nice video clip of them, too — see below. [If you're reading this in an e-mail, click on the title of the post to see the video on the NHBH website.]
These snails are a little unusual in that they look quite different in this stage vs. how they look as adults.
We thought we'd post the footage first to let you explore and wonder about which species this might be. Any guesses? I'll share more info about them tomorrow!
Okay, this isn't a recent photo, but I've been busy working on a presentation about sea stars...so here you go! A young Short-spined Sea Star (Pisaster brevispinus), photographed on 23 May 2015.
During a short walk at Point Reyes today (20 January 2024), I looked down to see this newt crossing a path covered in pine needles. My guess is Rough-skinned Newt (Taricha granulosa), but let me know if you have a different opinion.
Ah ha! It was tucked low among the grasses, but I spotted my first Footsteps-of-spring (Sanicula arctopoides) starting to flower on 16 January 2024.
We had to move some material on the ground today (15 January 2024), and look who was underneath!
Nice to see this beautiful Sierran Treefrog (Pseudacris sierra)...and it reminded me to check our rainfall totals. So far we've received ~12 inches of rain, or about 38% of the average annual total. Frogs have been quite vocal throughout our neighborhood. Have you been hearing them in yours?
We had to work late in the field tonight (time and tide wait for no one!), but we had a brief reward with an octopus sighting!
P.S. Thanks to the folks who spotted the octopus and to Eric for getting a photo!
Recent badger digging, with an interesting area in the lower right corner. In that oval patch you can see the soil is very smooth, with a couple of footprints. Perhaps the badger lay down to rest there?
I took these photos about a week ago, but wanted to share them since this is a species often associated with warmer water conditions.
This is the nectophore (swimming bell) of Diphyes dispar, a siphonophore. We recorded >50 individuals on Salmon Creek Beach on 1 January 2024.
The last time we observed this species was during the 2014-2016 marine heatwaves. Recent water temperatures have been warmer than average for this time of year, hovering ~13-14°C (56-57°F), perhaps connected to this winter's El Niño.
Here's another photo with a ruler for scale:
Eric gathered these little beach stones from the outer beach at Point Reyes so we could document the range of colors. Each stone is quite small — only 2-3 mm in length, so right on the edge between sand and gravel.
Can you tell that they're resting in a crease in my jeans? I couldn't decide which view was most interesting, so here are a couple more images, going back in time when we first started the mini-collection:
Lottia triangularis
Well, I realize
it might be hard to see the connection among all of these photos, but I
needed something to celebrate NHBH blog post #3,333! In previous years I noted when I crossed the 1,000 and 2,000 marks, so here's a post to observe crossing 3,000 with four tri's! Whew! Thanks for staying with me!
A beautiful male Northern Harrier (Circus hudsonius) turning to search for possible prey below. Photographed on Bodega Head on 31 December 2023. [You can click on the image for a larger and sharper version.]
