One woman's treasure...

Graphite, colored pencil on  8.5 x 11 Strathmore paper

I've loved to walk since I can remember. I love to put one foot in front of the other and propel myself into the known or the unknown. It's a simple act that we mostly never even think about. For many years illness has limited my ability to go walking, which has only made me appreciate it more. I'm thrilled when I can go to a park and walk even for just a half mile and ecstatic when it's one or two miles.  I've learned to appreciate every single walk I'm able to take, even when I can only go around the block.

Last Sunday I did just that early in the morning before the neighborhood was awake. I listened and watched as birds began to move about, looking for food and mates, not necessarily in that order. I noticed that the leaf buds on many trees were nearly ready to burst and that many lawns had been mowed. On one of those lawns I saw a pristine dead Roof rat (Rattus rattus) looking so natural that I hesitated before collecting her to take home, afraid she would leap up and take offense as I placed her into a bag. She didn't and I spent a couple of days sketching and admiring her.

I know I'm not really supposed to like rats. As I write this I'm listening to the rustlings of a family of them that we've been unsuccessfully trying to evict from the attic above my studio. As my work day is ending I can hear theirs beginning as they exit through the (not so) cunning trap door we put in to let them leave but keep them from getting back in. I really do admire their ability to adapt to adversity. They've traveled far from their original place on the planet, yet thrive and multiply. And multiply. Where once they lived high up in trees and foraged in fields and forests, many now live high up in our buildings and get a ready supply of food from our gardens, homes and refuse. These tiny creatures have caused us much bigger creatures an awful lot of grief for a very long time without even trying. Pretty impressive, if you ask me.

Graphite, ink on 8.5 x 11 inch Stonehenge paper

A death in the park

I was at the end of a walk when I heard, then saw, a mob of American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) circling nearby. It sounded and looked as though they were mobbing a predator so I decided to investigate further and walked quickly to the spot the birds seemed to be circling. In a little grove of oak and manzanita I found the fresh remains of a crow. The mob had disappeared and gone silent as soon as I arrived on the scene. There was no sign of the predator though I guessed that I might have interrupted the meal of a hawk or an owl.

As I looked around I saw that I was being regarded by a Turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) with what appeared to be dignified indifference. I got out some paper and a pencil and began to draw. The vulture proceeded to take care of some personal grooming then gathered herself together and lifted off with enviable grace.

I returned to the spot where I first heard the ruckus. The crows had begun flying about again, though this time over a larger area while still making a lot of noise. There were more of them, too. Then most of them disappeared, though I could still hear them. Finding an open area, I found them roosting in a tree at the top of the ridge I had walked off of just before all of the excitement. I watched for a while as the crows flew out and about then returned to the tree, calling out their harsh cries. After a while, there were only a handful still in the tree, mostly silent. I packed up my sketch gear as the last of the crows dispersed.
 

Lunar eclipse

6:10 a.m.

Our local paper reported that there would be a lunar eclipse on Saturday, December 11, 2011. The total eclipse was to occur between 6 and 7 a.m. The report said that the event would only be visible if you were at a relatively high elevation or at the coast because the moon would be so close to the horizon at the time of the eclipse. Over coffee on Friday my friend, JoAnn, and I decided to meet at the top of a hill (Fountaingrove) that's 800' according to Google and is near both of our houses. I got up at 4 and looked out the window to see if the sky was clear. I could easily see the beginning of the eclipse just below the canopy of the Valley oak in our backyard. It was hard to imagine that the moon would be very close to the horizon in only two hours. JoAnn, thinking similar thoughts, called me at 5:45 to say that she could see it from her yard, too. We considered meeting at her house to watch but decided it would be more fun to go up the hill as planned.

6:35 a.m.

It was 35º F (2º C) so I dressed warmly, packed my binoculars and sketch gear and scraped the ice off of my car windows before heading out. JoAnn and her family were already parked when I arrived. We were near an area designated as an open space with some homes on the other side of the street. A young German shepherd was roaming about and seemed very excited to have company. The eclipse was well under way and I got out some paper and a pen to begin sketching, using a nifty head lamp I'd bought for just such an occasion. I seemed to be having a hard time seeing the moon and commented to JoAnn about it. We both tried looking through binoculars but that made it worse. It was past 6 and it was our understanding that the moon was supposed to get bigger as it neared the horizon and turn a strong red color. Oh, and be fully eclipsed. My first sketch showed the moon way too big. The actual size appears above the sky. As we watched the moon sank lower in the sky and grew harder and harder to see. As the sun rose and the sky grew lighter we were able to see that a thin haze of clouds hovered low in the sky, causing the eclipsing moon to look hazy and blurred. The moon did get a bit bigger as it went lower but it never seemed to be totally eclipsed. At about 6:45 we decided that a nice warm breakfast sounded a bit more interesting than the fuzzy, eclipsed moon. I took one last look, cranked up the heater in my car and went home to eat breakfast then  had some fun coloring my sketches from memory.

A visit with a snake

One morning at the beginning of September Chloe and I were near the end of an entertaining early walk at Howarth Park. As we wound our way along the last trail before reaching pavement and the parking lot I saw something long and black stretched across the path. I stopped and bent closer to look and was delightfully surprised when the snake, for that's what it was, coiled it's tail and waved it about, revealing a brilliant orange red underside. Amazingly, the snake stayed right where it was and I sat down to spend some time in it's company. If I moved too close (and it had to be really close!) the tail would come up in a tight coil and wave about a few times then remain poised in the air until I retreated. There was a tannish band around the snake's neck, and the jet black upper part of it's body was shiny, as if wet, not what I would have expected from a snake. Chloe and I stayed about a half hour.

Ring-necked snakes (Diadophis punctatus) are found throughout the United States and in parts of Mexico and Canada. Nocturnal and secretive, they're seldom seen during the day. They're mildly venomous but, as I found, not aggressive. The venom may help incapacitate the salamanders, worms, slugs and insects that they like to eat.

Most of the resources I found call this snake  Pacific ring-necked snake (Diadophis punctatus amabilis). However, there seems to be some disagreement as to whether the different subspecies of D. punctatus are really different from one another.

Find out more about these shy snakes:
CaliforniaHerps.com
Wikipedia
wildherps.com
eNature.com

Unexpected find

The other morning, after a pleasant walk about Howarth Park, a city park in Santa Rosa CA, I was surprised to come across a turtle laying her eggs in a picnic area a bit of a distance on turtle legs from the lake that's the heart of this park. She had created a patch of mud by digging with her hind legs and, apparently, producing a lot of liquid. She blended well into her surroundings. When I stopped to make some sketches a crowd of humans gathered around, most wondering if she was my pet. I worked quickly and left so that she could go on about her business in private. I added the color later, at home.

If you had a pet turtle when you were a child you might recognize the Red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans), the most popular pet turtle in the world. The one I spotted was a bit bigger than the turtle I had when I was very young, with a shell that was about 10 inches ( 25.4cm) long. In northern California Red-eared sliders, natives of the American southeast, are easily spotted basking on logs and rocks in lakes and ponds, often alongside our only native freshwater turtle, the Western pond turtle (Clemmys marmorata).

If raccoons, rats, humans or other predators don’t disturb the nest which, by the way, is now nearly invisible, the eggs will hatch in 60 to 90 days and the hatchlings will try to make their way to the lake. If they make it that far birds, bullfrogs, fish and humans all threaten their survival.

References:
Wikipedia

Sketching tame wildlife

I'm learning how to sketch wildlife and have discovered that it's much easier to work on my speed sketching skills in places where the wild things aren't so wild. One of my favorite of these places is on Lake Ralphine at Howarth Park, a city park in Santa Rosa, California. There are year-round Canada geese, several varieties of domestic geese, mallards and California ground squirrels. The ground squirrels are extremely brazen. I've seen them go right up to people and beg for peanuts, jumping up on the bench if the person gets distracted and forgets to keep the supply coming. Since I travel with a dog, the squirrels keep their distance from me, yet still come close enough for me to sketch. This one seemed as interested in what I was doing as I was in what she was doing. Which wasn't so much. She stood on the rock and we watched each other for a while and then she was just gone.

I've been working in pen but wanted to try pencil to see if I could get more tone more quickly and, boy, did I! Now I'm having loads of fun with pencil sketching. It's kind of messy and I'd forgotten how much fun that can be. But mostly I'm just thrilled with how much more quickly I can get everything down on paper!

Strange birds

I walk almost every day at Howarth Park, a city park at the edge of Santa Rosa, California. I escape the more heavily populated trails as soon as I can and walk on trails where there are less humans and more nature, but at the end of every walk I have to take the main paved trail for a few hundred feet to get back to my car in the parking lot. That trail runs along the edge of Lake Ralphine and is usually so full of people, dogs, park vehicles and such, that I try to move along as quickly as I can.

I've certainly noticed the double-crested cormorants that roost in a tree over the water but, until today, I was too anxious to avoid the crowds to really pay attention to them. Since I've been learning to sketch birds I thought the cormorants would be good beginner's birds, since they tend to perch on a branch and just hang
out.

I found a nice little hill to sit on, above the busy trail and sketched for about an hour. As I was getting ready to leave I heard some strange guttural sounds and looked up to see that a lovely white-crested cormorant had landed precariously next to one of the black-crested birds in the tree. The black-crested bird was making the sounds I'd heard. The two birds began to move about in a

decidedly awkward dance -- cormorants aren't very graceful out of the water -- while the black-crested bird continued to vocalize. After a while they moved closer together and rubbed heads and necks together for a while until white-crest flew off, only to return again in a few moments for a bit more dancing, and then off again. White-crest was last seen swimming along with a small group of black-crested birds, while the dance partner in the tree settled back down to some preening and hanging out.
Double-crested cormorants had all but disappeared until the 1970's when DDT and PCB's were banned from use. Now the birds are so numerous that many humans who fish consider them pests.

Here are some interesting articles for further reading about these fascinating birds:

The Cormorant: The Devil Undisguised?; Dr. Tom Kazo, Ph.D. and Donna McVicar Cannon Kazo.
Double-crested Cormorant; Wikipedia.
Great Lakes Fact Sheet; The Rise of the Double-crested Cormorant on the Great Lakes: Winning the War Against Contaminants.

Fungi won't be around much longer

I've been enjoying seeing all of the lovely images of birds but thought I'd mix things up a bit with a little sketch I did of Helvella acetabulum, one of our spring fungi. The end of our fungi season is fast approaching. It's so very short! This fungus is currently fruiting in several parts of Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery, a lovely place with many old Coast live oaks (Quercus agrifolia), a tree these fungi seem to get along with very well. Spores puffed out in a light cloud as the air moved around the fungus. The veins are a lighter color than the cup but the sun was shining into the cup, making the cup walls translucent and the heavier veins opaque.

Looking for earth tongues

Every year, at about this time, I find earth tongues, quaint, tiny fungi that look like...well...tongues sticking out of the earth. This year I accidentally noticed that they were fruiting in a location other than the one I normally found them in. Which got me to wondering how common they really are. So, for about two weeks, I walked slow as a snail with my nose to the ground, looking for earth tongues. They are, indeed, quite common in some of the wooded areas, at least at Howarth Park. Aside from the two species I usually find, I got my first glimpse of a gorgeous green species when I found a few fruiting with some of the more familiar black ones. The drawing above is of Geoglossum sp. Without microscopic work, it's difficult to identify the Geoglossums to species.

One day I was admiring a Geoglossum that I found in a new location when I noticed a stick covered with little cup fungi, which are even harder to find (in my experience) than earth tongues. The largest one was only 9mm across. These cups are most likely Plectania sp. and, as you may have already guessed, fruit on wood.



Here's a link to a more detailed article about earth tongues.

Mushroom for brunch

It was supposed to rain early this morning but I took my chances and headed for Howarth Park to see what I could see. Luckily, and not surprisingly, the weather forecasters were wrong and there was only a little bit of drizzle here and there, not even enough to make the paper wet. Toward the end of my walk I found this mushroom, Agrocybe praecox, one of the harbingers of spring in these parts. I used the compact mirror, that I carry for just this application, to examine the underside of the mushroom and confirm my tentative identification. When I saw the slug munching away I knew that I had to get a quick sketch. I drew the slug first and was glad I did as it left soon after I got there.

Learning to sketch birds

I've been just awed by Laureline's sketches of the birds in her yard and thought I'd add some of mine. I've been trying to sketch the birds at our feeder a little bit every day, so I have several pages of bird sketches now. I'm actually feeling a bit more confident sketching quickly and finding it easier than when I began a few weeks ago. It's affected my other sketching, too, which is a pleasant surprise!

I really wasn't paying much attention to our feeder birds before sketching them and have gotten to know them a bit better in the time that I've been at it. I've discovered that the nervous, chatty, bossy house finches are the most numerous but we have quite a few other visitors, including White and Gold crowned sparrows, who mostly hug the ground, but occasionally will jump up on the platform feeder. The California towhees are quite brazen and don't seem as disturbed by my staring presence on the other side of the glass. In fact, they stare back while they eat! Oregon juncos move faster than the speed of light, it seems, and the Mourning doves are true Californians, very mellow and easy going.

I look forward to my bird sketching sessions and find myself listening for the house finch's chatter as I work on other tasks around my house. When they call, I come running whenever I can.

Helvella

Helvella lacunosa are a fairly common fungus in northern California that seem to fruit longer than most. The fruiting bodies are quite sturdy and persist for a good long while. I'm told that they fruit with conifers but I find them mostly in association with one of our native trees, coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia). Helvella don't have gills or pores. Rather, they produce their spores on the upper surface of the wrinkly cap.

I had collected several of these, with caps in various shades of gray and black, planning to do several watercolor sketches. They languished in the refrigerator for over a week and today, when I finally got around to sketching, they were rather old and funky. Every time I moved one, or opened the container, spores swirled up, up and about the room. It was sort of like a dust storm. Blggghhh! They're still fruiting so tomorrow I'll try to find some that are a bit fresher.  Apparently they're edible. I've seen several suggestions of ways to cook and eat them while reading about fungi online lately. Not that I'm going to eat them myself! But I did lay them to rest in my backyard. We have a valley oak (Quercus lobata), which is a poor mushroom host, but maybe I'll get some to fruit in my yard next season! My very own helvella garden! How cool would that be? Oh, the sketch of the black capped fungus was done with ball point pen and the color sketch was done in ball point and watercolor.

A decaying log hosting a lot of fungi

These fungi are fruiting on an old log in a little dell that I like to visit in Howarth Park, a beautiful city park in Santa Rosa CA, with some lovely trails meandering through mixed woods. Mixed woods mean more mushrooms because fungi and trees form relationships that are beneficial to each and the more types of trees, the more fungi. I would have had to draw a much bigger picture to fit all of the fungi that were actually on this log, but I focused on the lacy white entity on the left of the picture. It's called Hericium abietis and is one of the tooth fungi.

The mushrooms to the right of the Hericium abietis are Mycena haematopus, identifiable by a stalk that "bleeds" red juice when cut or pinched.

Finally, the black lumps behind the Hericium abietis are called Annulohypoxylon thouarsianum with a common name of cramp balls, presumably after someone tried to eat them? They're very common and persist even in dry weather so are especially easy to find.

The reason all of these fungi are on this log is because they're all wood-rotters, the under appreciated composters of our forests. It's interesting to watch a log as it decomposes because different fungi appear at different stages of decomposition.