Vote for 2010 Estate Walnut Label

Every year, we harvest English walnuts from the two grand trees behind the barn.  I give many of the walnuts away under the label of Happy Snake Ranch Walnuts.  Last year, we made a party out of it with guests, sunsetting, an appearance by the Deer Whisperer, and I boldly claimed that these are Estate Walnuts.

With the arrival of the 2010 storms, the walnuts are dropping and it is time to decide on the snake to be featured on this year's label.

The 2010 candidates are:

Warrior Celebrates End of Thistle Season

Impalement - another hazard of thistles.
I found this honey bee speared on a yellow starthistle spine while weeding in August 2009.

Hooray, it's the end of the thistle season.  I welcome the brief respite from digging, pulling and scowling at thistles.  Usually the first few rains of the wet season are modest, but today's storm was big enough to pound into the ground any seedheads still clinging to the brown thistle stems.  That's when I concede the battle for another year.  At least until the thistle seedlings start germinating in about six weeks.

It was a long and unusually cool summer and those thistles just kept blooming.  Long after the cattle left the Dipper Ranch and travelled on to the brussel sprout fields, the stockyard, or wherever their bovine destiny took them, the yellow starthistle plants kept putting out more dang-blasted, spiny blooms.

Travels with Nightsnake

California nightsnake.  Ranger E has a calm way with snakes.  She's observed that individual snakes often have uniquely shaped spots.  With careful photodocumentation of their spots, I may be able to tell the difference between future nightsnakes.

This is the third fall season I have found a nightsnake on the Dipper Ranch.  In October 2007, I had just moved onto the ranch and didn't know what a nightsnake was. Fortunately, something seemed odd about the small, brown-spotted snake in the springbox in those first few weeks, so we walked the dripping net back to the house to take photos.  With frequent reference to our burgeoning natural history library, I eventually learned to tell the difference between the 4 local brown-spotted snakes:  gopher snake, rattlesnake, nightsnake and juvenile yellow-bellied racer.

Vultures & Death

Vulture sculpture by Santa Cruz Mountains metalsmith, Bill Sorich

This post is about vultures and death as part of my continuing exploration of why the turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) are suddenly hanging out on the Dipper Ranch barn.  In Vultures and Migration, I pretty much concluded that the local vultures of the central California coast do not migrate in the winter, so that leads me back to death.

In the last few weeks, I found part of a carcass on the road near the corral watering trough that the vultures visit every day.

That is, the vultures visit the trough every day.  I never saw them on the carcass although the eyeballs were gone and the skin partially flaked off as if stripped by beaks.  

[Please note:  this posting includes photos of dead animals.  No animals were harmed in creating of this post.  Proceed at your own educational risk by pressing Read More.]

International Rock Flippin' Day

International Rock Flipping Day is today (September 12).  Go ahead,  flip a rock, record what you observe, and send info including photos, sketches, notes, sound effects to link at end of this post.  Make sure you are careful with the critters that live under rocks and put the rock back gently where you find it.  Good tips at link above.  I'll post whatever I find under rocks at the Dipper Ranch.

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And here is what I found.  Mid-September in summer-dry California requires strategic thinking for rock flipping day.

Black Florida Vulture Adventure

Black vultures fluffing their neck ruffs against Florida's amazing and constant clouds.

On Wednesday, I was driving up Page Mill Road and saw a group of turkey vultures flying high in the late summer sky.  I wanted to stop and watch them but I had 40 people waiting for me to make a presentation.  Durn!  Don't these people have better things to do, like watch vultures fly?  Obviously, I am still obsessed with TVs.  Last summer, I was obsessed with deer.  The natural world keeps giving me new things to discover, kinda like those constantly changing Happy Meal toys.

Vultures and Migration

The horaltic pose - sitting with wings widespread - perhaps to gather the sun's warmth.

In August, the turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) continued to land on the barn every few days for short periods of time.  Often I noticed them at midday, and several times it was exactly 11:00 when they circled the farmyard.  One day as I leaned back to watch the vultures chase their loops directly overhead, I heard loud whooshing sounds.  Whenever the vultures approached the side of the spiral closest to the barn, they tucked in their wings and suddenly raced through that part of the turn with loud wing turbulence.  Coming out of the bank, they pointed skywards and slowed down to their typical dihedral and wobbly flight above the orchard.  The red-tailed hawks were also circling, and the vultures would dive bomb any hawk below them on the fast side of the thermal.  Eventually, the red-tails pulled out and flew to Mindego Hill to claim their own breeze.

Vultures on the Barn

Turkey vultures can have a wingspan up to six feet.
Their wings usually appear two-toned from below.

One of the cats made a staccato sound on a hot day when I had all the window blinds closed.  Not understanding the predator's code, I looked around.  With their butts in the air, both Cole and Mango were straining to look under the living room blind.

I peered between their alert ears expecting to see a brown towhee on the windowsill or one of the spotted fawns draining the birdbath again.  Nothing moving in the backyard.  When I flipped open a blind slat, I startled a turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) on the garage roof directly outside the window.  As it dropped behind the roof line, I caught a brief glimpse of something hanging from its beak, round with a stem hanging down.  A leaf?  Or perhaps a mouse.  That explained the cats' complaint at seeing a scavenger steal their snack.