Bobcat in Late Afternoon Sun
Easy-Going Cat
Here’s a bobcat I photographed in the late afternoon. He was very patient with me. My kind of cat.
Tag: marin county
Recent Trip to Point Reyes National Seashore
I drove out to Point Reyes a few days go. I saw this cow elk on the D Ranch. I wondered what caused that protrusion of her cheek. Tumor? Abscess? A big wad of cud that would do a baseball player proud? She seemed normal in other respects. She has ear tags so she is an old gal. I think the Park Service last put ear tags on elk in 1999. That would make her 15 or more.
From what I’ve read lately, elk are a controversial subject among some of the ranchers who don’t want them eating any of the food the cows eat in the ranching areas. I don’t know the details, but apparently this controversy has caused the Park Service to start preparing a management plan for the pastoral zone.
I also saw a few bobcats and coyotes that day. Here’s a bobcat that caught a gopher while I was photographing him.
Like the elk, he seemed to qualify as a senior citizen. I got a few photos of him with his mouth open and his lower canines seemed pretty worn down. He was a handsome old guy though.
As you can see, there doesn’t appear to be much of any lower right canine left. For that matter, I don’t see any incisors on the bottom either. This photo doesn’t show the complete area where the lower left canine should be because the lower lip is in the way somewhat, but if it were normal I think we’d see at least the top half of it.
Lamb; Petaluma, California
Last spring I went out on the local roads looking for young goats and sheep to photograph. I found some kids. Click here to see one of those kids. I also found a ranch that raises miniature horses. Click here for a picture of one of them. However, I learned I was too late for lambs.
This year I went out looking a bit earlier and found a large flock of sheep with many lambs not far from my home. Here’s one of them. The sheep were watched over by a very large guard dog. It had a white coat and weighed about one-hundred pounds. It looked like a very light-colored yellow lab on steroids. I think it was a Maremma breed of protective dog. As I got out of my car to photograph, the dog came toward me to check me out. After a few sniffs he decided I was harmless and he let me pet him. He wasn’t just for “show” either. I had seen a coyote about a quarter mile from where I stopped and parked to photograph.
It was nice to see that this Sonoma County rancher used a guard dog (or dogs) to protect his sheep instead of the poisons and leg traps used on most ranches. Unlike the other counties in California (and other States), neighboring Marin County has a policy of not contracting with the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services Unit to kill any and all predators by use of poisons and steel traps. Instead, it encourages sheep ranchers to use non-lethal predator control methods such as dogs and appropriate fencing to keep coyotes away from sheep and uses the money it would have paid Wildlife Services to subsidize the ranchers in the acquisition and use of non-lethal coyote control methods. It has worked extremely well. Coyote-caused deaths are down in Marin from the Wildlife Services days and the County has been spending less than it did when it contracted with Wildlife Services. Plus, non-target species (raptors, foxes, bobcats, badgers, weasels, domestic dogs, domestic cats etc.) aren’t being killed in Marin like they were in the Wildlife Services days. I wrote about Marin’s program in this blog.
I wish Sonoma County would follow Marin.
Fountain Sculpture; Tiburon, California
I lived in Tiburon for a while in the mid-1970s. It’s a beautiful location on the north shore of San Francisco Bay. Thanks to the hilly terrain, many residents have a view of the San Francisco Bay. I occasionally go there to return to my Marin “roots.” It hasn’t changed much, which I like.
One thing that wasn’t there in the 1970s is this sculpture. It’s called “Coming About.” I’ve read that it represents five sailboats. When I first saw it I thought of shark fins. That also seemed fitting given that Tiburon is Spanish for “shark.” Some think the sails remind them of birds’ wings. That would also be fitting given the number of seagulls that hang out at several waterside restaurants. The sails slowly rotate. The Guaymas and Servino restaurants provide a backdrop to the scene.
Marin’s Sensible Approach to Protecting Sheep from Coyotes
There was a very good article in the San Francisco Chronicle last Friday about Marin County, California, and its approach to dealing with coyotes and sheep ranching. (Marin County is the county you enter when you drive north across the Golden Gate Bridge.) The article, written by Peter Fimrite, and entitled “Dogs Keeping Coyotes at Bay,” can be found here.
Most counties in the United States that have any sheep ranching in them have agreements with the Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service for “Wildlife Services.” APHIS’ Wildlife Services (“WS”) unit has, as one of its purposes, the trapping, poisoning and shooting of wild animals that are considered to be a problem for someone.
In the late ’90s Marin County terminated its relationship with APHIS. I remember reading an article in the Marin Independent Journal in the early to mid ’90s which summarized WS’ activities in Marin for the previous year. It listed the number of coyotes killed. There were a few things about the article that struck me. First, I knew of WS, but was surprised that it even operated in Marin, a bedroom community of San Francisco. Second, I was surprised at the number of coyotes killed. Third, I was shocked that a large number of bobcats and badgers were also killed due to the non-selective nature of baited steel traps and poisoned meat. (I was also surprised that there were even any badgers in Marin. Fast forward. Last year I photographed several in Point Reyes National Seashore.) Thinking about it now, I assume the numbers were conservative because animals that die from poisoning aren’t always found and the same is even more true for animals that feed on the carcasses of poisoned animals and die even farther from the bait site.
As the article points out, things came to a head in 1996. WS was killing a lot of coyotes, but sheep losses seemed to be unaffected. WS proposed stepping up killing methods by adding collars for sheep which would be filled with the poison Compound 1080. Some residents decided it was time to do something. They were led by Camila Fox, now head of Project Coyote. The State Legislature was convinced to ban steel traps and poison collars. By the end of the ’90s the wildlife advocates convinced the County to end its relationship with WS. The County decided to spend the money it used to pay to WS to instead pay for guard dogs, llamas, specialized fences, night corrals and lambing sheds and to pay the ranchers for any sheep losses. The program has been an overwhelming success. The county spends less than it paid WS and the sheep losses are much lower than in the WS days. Not only do these measures greatly reduce sheep losses, but coyotes reproduce at lower levels when the Alpha males and females live normal-length lives as pack leaders, unlike when they are killed and packs break up and many more coyotes begin reproducing. This is basic wildlife ecology, but it is ignored by WS.
In 2005 APHIS/WS completed a study of its activities in California entitled “Wildlife Services in California: Economic Assessments of Benefits and Costs.” A copy of the report can be found here. I’m not sure why the report was written, but it seems to me to have been written to justify its mission and methods, especially in light of Marin County’s success using non-lethal methods and at lower cost.
A word about the coyote photo. I photographed it in Point Reyes National Seashore a couple of days before the San Francisco Chronicle article was published. The coyote was smaller than usual. It may have been a yearling, but I would assume a yearling would be about the size as its parents by now. It also seemed totally unfazed by me in my car. When I see and attempt to photograph coyotes in the open ranching areas of the Seashore they always get out of sight fast. The same is true for bobcats and badgers (and wildlife in general). I don’t know why it stayed fairly close while I photographed it. Perhaps it had spent time in areas with lots of hikers before moving into the ranching area.
Views from Inverness, California
I went out to Point Reyes yesterday, something I haven’t been doing too much of this year compared to last year. The forecast said there would be fog, but thankfully it was a no-show. Moreover, the light was fantastic thanks to lots of clouds varying from almost pure white to very dark. The sun shined through in spots on occasion. I didn’t see much in the way of wildlife; just the usual ho-hum critters (quail, songbirds, hawks, elk and deer) plus one coyote just before sunset. I had lunch with a friend who said he saw four bobcats before our lunch. Another friend told me he saw two badgers there yesterday. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m losing my touch in spotting wildlife because I haven’t been spending much time looking for them this year.
I was feeling uneasy all day because I only brought my wildlife gear and I sensed there would be some good landscape opportunities at sunset given the good light and the clouds. Shooting landscape photos with telephoto lenses is, needless to say, limiting. One thing I’ve been meaning to photograph is Black Mountain, which is a large coastal hill/mountain completely covered in grass. It is very green this time of year. I’ve also heard it referred to as Elephant Mountain. I made a mental note to stop in Inverness on my way home to see how it looked. I knew it was one landscape scene I could photograph using a telephoto lens. This is how it looked when I arrived in Inverness. The green grass of Black Mountain has been turned to gold by the setting sun. The water in the foreground is Tomales Bay. The green hills in the midground are not part of Black Mountain. I don’t know why it’s called Black Mountain.
As I stood there in Inverness, I looked at the rest of the east horizon and saw a nice looking ridge well north of Black Mountain that was also bathed in the last light of the day. I don’t know the name for it, assuming there is one. There are two large structures at the top of it, unfortunately.
I was somewhat lucky yesterday which counterbalanced my poor planning in not bringing some landscape lenses. I was lucky in the sense that I made it to Inverness with about 5 minutes to spare before the sun’s golden light left these mountain tops.
Peregrine Falcon, Point Reyes National Seashore
I went out to Point Reyes yesterday for the first time since I left for Yellowstone in early September. I’m still trying to get some good images of elk during the rut. Thanks to heavy fog around Pierce Point, I didn’t have much luck in that regard. I was lucky, though, to spot this peregrine feeding on some prey while perched on a fence post.
