Pond Cows

Cattle reflect at the Barn Pond, an ephemeral pond which appears for a few days after heavy and steady rain.
How, they wonder, do frogs and newts know not to lay eggs in this pond,
while ducks make a paddle-visit.

It's raining again and the frog chorus is very loud every night.  The cattle and deer have rinsed coats although usually they are also wearing mud socks.  The coast range newts are slowly leaving the ponds as evidenced by the occasional sad orange blobs on Alpine Road.  I am trying to write something about newts but am stuck pondering evolution, so, sigh, while you wait, here are the answers to the puzzle in the last post.

In February Scrambled Ramble, I shared photos of plants and animals popping up at the Dipper Ranch some of which can be confused with each other.  Here are the unscrambled captions for those photos.

• coast range newt cruising
• coast range newts laying eggs
• popcorn flower seedling
• fiddleneck seedling
• blue-eyed grass seedling
• dead California quail
• California red-legged frog eggmass
• western hounds tongue
• Sierran treefrog
• California bay flower
• shed antler of black-tailed deer

On some days from this vantage point near the Newt Pond,
 you can see the ocean 12 miles away in the background.

Recently, there was a light dusting of snow at the Dipper Ranch which lasted about 6 hours.  The new view from my demolished porch/now deck is so fabulous, I have been working on rehanging its clothesline for 2 days and I am still not done (and not at all upset about spending another day out there).  My neighbor got 2 photos of a mountain lion on her wildlife camera last night.  While looking for a possible second dead steer last weekend, I instead found a coyote skull and then a mysterious wrecked car.  Although they were in proximity to each other, I do not think the coyote killed the car.

For some reason,
I seem to get distracted while writing on the new deck.