The La Honda Way

Mindego Gateway - A New Trailhead to Russian Ridge

A rainstorm at the Mindego Gateway parking lot   

There's a new kid in the neighborhood. Mindego Gateway is a new trailhead and parking lot in the Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve. In addition to connecting with ten miles of existing trails to popular locations like Borel Hill and the Ancient Oaks, the Gateway will provide access to a new trail in Spring 2016 that will climb Mindego Hill. For those who like short walks with gorgeous views, there is also a path from the new parking lot to a tiered deck.

While building the parking lot, we discovered hidden plants and animals, and clues that many others have touched this land before us.

Bioblitz - the wet part

California slender salamander. Tiny but if you look, they are ubiquitous in even the smallest of damp locations. Robert Stebbins found that the total number and perhaps the total biomass of either this slender salamander or another common small salamander, the ensatina, was greater than any other resident vertebrate in a Berkeley redwood forest,  (Stebbins and McGinnis, 2012).   

The bioblitz at Golden Gate National Parks continued through Saturday, March 29 with the official deadline for submitting all observations of plants and animals in the parks at noon. On Saturday, it was raining. Real rain like we actually live on the edge of a giant reservoir of water and arbitrator of weather - the Pacific Ocean. Rain like we haven't seen in two years. Rain that cut the number of attendees at the inventory hike Naiad and I led at Rancho Corral de Tierra from the 30 who signed up to five brave souls.

We led those five brave hikers into the park in the rain, past the fungi, insect, bird and botany teams, and into a forest. Many of the Monterey pines had foam streaming down their trunks in the rain which formed frothy piles at the base of each tree. I've seen this phenomenon before but never with so many trees.

Wolf's Milk - A Bioblitz Preview

Wolf's milk - actually not a fungus or a Hostess pastry - a fact I learned while browsing iNaturalist   

The National Park Service is having a bioblitz at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in the San Francisco Bay area on March 28 and 29, 2014. Sponsored by National Geographic, it's gonna be huge. They expect thousands of citizens to join over 300 scientists observing and documenting the plants and animals of Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo Counties at 12 locations of GOGA (the National Park Service's four-letter code for this park).

A bioblitz is an event where animal and plant species are identified in a specific location over a short period of time. The eyes and ears of students and citizens are led by scientists to cover as much area in the park as possible and to confirm identifications. The inventory is useful to understand the park's ecology but it is also a great way for everyone to experience the biological richness of our public lands and the techniques of scientific inventory.

Snow Moon

Full moon through California buckeye tree at the Dipper Ranch, February 25, 2013

Late February's full moon is the Snow Moon.  In central coastal California, we had snow for about 4 hours this winter.

I meant to photograph the full moon just as it was coming over Georgia's Ridge. I was inside getting ready by cleaning my best lens only to get distracted by amazing reflections of the cowboy light in the newly cleaned lens.

Wildflower Hotspot #5 - Bean Hollow and Pescadero State Parks

Flowers, rocks and sea life at the edge of the continent.

When the hills and valleys of the Santa Cruz Mountains get summer dry and the spring wildflowers go to seed, there are still places to see local wildflowers - the cool San Mateo coast.  Coastal parks stay moist with summer fog, and the spring/summer wildflower bloom is later and longer there.  Because much of the San Mateo coast is undeveloped, you can visit not only the ocean and beach, but also coastal prairie and coastal bluff scrub.

Pescadero State Beach and Pescadero Marsh Natural Preserve are 15.7 miles south on Highway 1 from Half Moon Bay.  On one side of the highway is the ocean, beach and sandy bluff.  You can follow the winding edges of Pescadero Creek under the highway to trails along brackish and freshwater marshes, creekside forests and brushy habitat for more variety of plants and good birding.  Docents with the San Mateo Coast Natural History Association lead hikes to Pescadero Marsh on the first Sunday of the month at 10 AM and the third Sunday of the month at 1 PM.

Oddities at Año Nuevo - Part 2, The Beach

All the rocks on the beach were framed by black halos and parentheses.

Last time, I talked about the freaky poison oak shrubs at Año Nuevo State Park on the lovely San Mateo coast of central California. On the beach end of the park, there are interesting sights to catch your eye besides the monstrous elephant seals fighting, mating and raising young.

Recent storms washed fine black material out of this dark vein in the coastal bluff and dragged it out to sea. Some grains were caught in eddies around the rocks and settled onto the beach. The dark material is probably peat deposited hundreds to thousands of years ago which keeps getting resorted by coastal uplifting, wave erosion and shifted by the many faults in the area including the Frijoles Fault.

When I visited earlier this month, a freshwater reservoir near the beach end of the Año Nuevo Point Trail was full of gulls rinsing off saltwater. While lounging on the beach, we noticed some peculiar behavior of the gulls leaving the pond after their daily bath.


They would fly off the pond's surface, then bank up over the coastal bluffs and stall in the air to vigorously shake their feathers. For a split in-air second, they would shake their wing and tail feathers so hard, they were ruffled, flying balls. As they soared over the beach, their feathers would fall back into place.

Gull after ocean-going gull would momentarily spasm. Once you notice, it's quite hilarious.

While the tourists plodded up and down the beach (some wore pointed heels in the sand) to gape at the enormous elephant seal bulls, we botanists snickered at the butt-wiggling gulls.


An associate, who used to catch, measure and tag gulls for research on San Francisco Bay, told me that the gulls would do the same shake dance whenever the scientists released them. Per Año's other oddity, my co-hikers reported seeing crested poison oak bushes at various other natural spots. So why was Año Nuevo the first place I have seen these two oddities after 20 years of hiking California's wildlands?

Possibly, the unique light reflecting off the ocean surface and gleaming through the coastal fog reveals features that are otherwise not noticeable. Or, it could be that nature is so incredibly complex and detailed that at any time and any outdoor place, you are likely to make new discoveries. I think Año Nuevo is one of those magical places where the quality of the air and pleasant laughter of your companions stimulates the mind to divine the unusual in familiar surroundings.

Go outside, play, tell me a story.

See Also:
Geology of Point Año Nuevo State Park, Gerald E. Weber.

Oddities at Año Nuevo - Part 1, Strange Poison

A male elephant seal snoozing on the beach.
His chest has scratch marks from fighting with other males.

Año Nuevo State Park on the beautiful San Mateo coast of California is famous for beachside viewing of elephant seals and whale watching. Año Nuevo State Park is also the location of a former Ohlone village where archaeologists, tribal members and ecologists are researching ancient fire and land management practices of native peoples. See the California State Parks website for more info about these popular activities.

I would like to report on something else, two natural oddities that surprised me on a recent visit to Año Nuevo State Park: poison oak mutations and butt-wiggling seagulls.