Shades of gray

 

Dramatic rain clouds over Plymouth, MA, on 22 December 2016

 

 

Common Sand Dollar (Echinarachnius parma) on the beach 

 

Sanderling (Calidris alba) feeding along the shore

 

Snowy solstice

Okay, well, not such a "snowy" solstice, but here's a nice Snowy Plover photographed a couple of days before, on 19 December. 

Enjoy the winter and the arrival of longer days!

Whisked away

 

A distant shot, so a bit fuzzy, but I liked that you could see a small mammal in this kite's talons.

White-tailed Kite (Elanus leucurus) photographed over Bodega Head, 17 December 2016.

 

Crystal connections

Brrrr!  It was a chilly 30°F in Cotati this morning — a brisk morning in this part of the world.  Here are some frost crystals that were on my car in the front yard:

 

When we were looking at the frost this morning, we were struck by the similarities to something quite different:

 

Although they resemble sparkling frost crystals, these are the calcareous spines of a Glass-spined Brittle Star (Ophiothrix spiculata). You might recall an earlier post (from 9 November 2014) when I described how these brittle stars feed — by wiping their spines with their tubefeet to pick up small organic particles stuck on the sharp points and then transferring the particles to their mouth (on the underside of the central disc).

Recently, Eric captured some footage of this behavior.  First, here's another still image.  If you look carefully, you can see a long flexible tubefoot being drawn along one of the spines:

 

And, for an outstanding view of this feeding behavior in action, here's a video clip.  There are some general views of the brittle star crawling, and then watch for the feeding behavior between ~16-40 seconds. [If you can't see the video in the e-mail, click on the title of this post to go to the web page.]

Glass-spined Brittle Star from Jackie Sones on Vimeo.

Pretty amazing!  

Thanks to Eric for sharing these photos and the video clip.

P.S.  Stay warm, everyone!
 

A perfect match

 

A few days ago, Eric spotted this wonderful sculpin in the rocky intertidal zone.

I haven't learned how to identify the different species of intertidal sculpins yet, but this one is too beautiful not to share, even though I'm not sure which species it is.

Here's a close-up — note the mottled pink splotches on the body and the fins that appear to mimic coralline algae:

 

The camouflage is especially striking when the sculpin is viewed among the coralline algae growing on the rocks:

 

Keeping an eye on the weather

 

Many of us were keeping an eye on the weather today...over 2 inches of rain fell during the past 24 hours.

 

California Red-legged Frog (Rana draytonii), 15 December 2016

 

Happy face

 

Well, what do you know...we were doing field work tonight when we noticed a little face just offshore looking our way.

We had to keep working, but then out of the corner of my eye I noticed that the River Otter was getting out of the water and onto a patch of surfgrass:

 

The light was dim, and this was a distant view, but I'm not sure I have a picture of a River Otter in the rocky intertidal zone yet...so here's one!

The otter had caught something and it proceeded to eat its prey (a fish?) in a more protected channel among the kelp:

 

This series of photos was a fun follow-up to last night's post — "Happy feet" — about River Otter tracks.

P.S.  And for some additional information about River Otter tracks, see the post from 2 April 2013.