Those Nutty Nuthatches

There's a new bird in town, or perhaps I just haven't noticed them before.  Red Breasted Nuthatches, Sitta canadensis.  They are quite amusing to watch as they creep up and down the live oaks and monterey pines nearby.  Just like Spiderman, they crawl upside down on the underside of branches as easy as on the top.  I saw one find a bug or a nut or something in the crevice of the bark of a tree and then fly off with it in its beak.  We also watched a pair flittering about, possibly fighting over territory or mates?  Or perhaps it was simply a mating ritual?  They were chattering the whole time, but I could not understand a word they said.

These birds were not shy, they stuck to their work, inspecting every crevice in the bark of the tree as I snapped these photos.  

Miner's Lettuce

In the description of our blog, we say we will discuss the fauna and FLORA of the bay area, yet every post so far has been on animals.  I do not want to be labeled as a 'kingdomist' so here is the first (of hopefully many) posts on the kingdom plantae.

Walking around the house today, I saw miner's lettuce--Claytonia perfoliata--growing everywhere. It's hard to miss with its signature circular leaf on a stalk.  No wonder the University of California calls it a weed.  I took a bite of a leaf and it brought back memories of my childhood in Hollister.  We called it 'Indian Lettuce' back then and found it in the fields around our town.  It is slightly sweet and well deserving of the moniker 'lettuce'.  Apparently, the deer like to eat it, too.  Its little white flowers are a prelude to the plethora of spring wildflowers that should start blooming in the Bay Area this month.
If you come across some of this delightful plant and want to give it a try, here is a recipe for you.  I think I'll go out and pick some for a salad for tonight.

House cat encounters deer

Our cat Paloosh is lazy.  And has gotten lazier.  So much so, that sometimes he has not gone outside to do his toilet stuff.  So now we have him on a routine.  Every morning and afternoon (if it is not pouring rain) we put him out the front door.  He makes his way around the side of the house, down the hill to the back of the house, then up onto the deck and in through the cat door.  Along the way there are several locations with loose dirt for him to take care of his business, and we assume he takes advantage of the opportunity.  We have been doing this for a couple of months now.

This morning was a little different.  We glanced out the window and saw a black tailed deer, a doe, grazing at the side of the house.  We love to see these elegant critters, especially when they are up close.  Then we noticed that something near the house had caught the deer's eye.  We stretched our necks to see what the doe was looking at, and lo and behold, it was Paloosh.  He was hiding in the grass, and the deer was blocking his path around the house.  I grabbed a camera and took a few quick photos.

Paloosh kept one eye on the deer and schlumped back up towards the front of the house.  The deer was only mildly interested in the cat and continued to graze on the grass along the path, which surprised me a little as deer's main predator is the mountain lion, a distant cousin of the house cat.  Paloosh slipped under the "deer proof" fence to the safety of the front yard, and then around the other side of the house to the cat door.   We asked him later what he thought of the encounter, but he did not say much.

Don't Pick Up a Banana Slug

Working in the yard today I came across a critter I did not expect to see:  a Banana Slug (Ariolimax columbianus ?).  I have seen many of these in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Muir Woods, and once or twice in Tilden Park.  I thought they made their homes exclusively under redwood trees.  But yet, here he is, on rocky soil and more exposed than any I have seen before.

These slugs excrete a slimy substance to keep themselves hydrated.  A naturalist at Muir Woods told us that most animals will not eat banana slugs due to the slime they produce on their skin, but raccoons have found they can wash off the slime in water and then dine on these delicacies.  The slime evidently turns into an incredible glue according to those who have gotten it on their hands, so I would recommend letting these creatures be.

This guy is not nearly as yellow as some.  Some are truly deserving of their banana moniker, a true banana yellow and banana shape, and if you step on one, I suppose you will get a true banana squish.  This one is one of the bigger specimens I have seen, between 7 and 8 inches (~20 cm) long (see the penny in the picture for scale).   He was moving along at a sluggish pace, 1 body length in about 2 minutes, or about .00006 miles per hour by my calculations.

As lowly as the banana slug may seem, it does get respect on one college campus. Most colleges and universities here in the U.S. pick a mascot that is strong or fierce, like a lion or bear or Trojan, but the University of California at Santa Cruz chose the banana slug.   Why?  I suppose they have their reasons.

Raccoons: Access Denied

Last month we wrote a post (Masked bandit comes for dinner) about a raccoon coming into our house through the cat door and raiding the cat's food dishes.  We caught him on our motion sensor camera.   Brian suggested we buy an electronic cat door to prevent the raccoons from entering.  We did, and it seems to be working.

This new cat door has a sensor that detects magnets, and it comes with 2 magnets to put on your cats' collars.  As the cat approaches the door, the sensor detects the magnet on the cat's collar and unlatches the door so the cat can enter.  If the sensor does not detect a magnet, the door stays latched shut.

We were not sure it would work when we bought it.  First, our large cat, Paloosh, had never worn a collar and we wondered if he would object to wearing one.  This turned out to be a non-problem.  We bought a cat collar, put it on him, and he pretty much ignored it was there.  Second, the whole thing sounded a bit 'hocus-pocus' or 'smoke and mirrors', but it is now installed and it does work.

Ninja, with magnet and blue bell on her collar

It did take some adjustment for the cats.  Ninja had the most trouble at first.  She would hear the door latch click as she approached and this would startle her, she would pause, and then the door would re-latch.   She would poke at it with her paw to no avail.  We forced open the latch and unplugged the battery for a few days until she was confident to go right through it.  When we re-installed the battery she went through it with no problem.

The door does have some side benefits as well.  We realize that it will keep out the neighborhood cats, as long as their owners do not have magnets on their collars.  And it keeps the wind out, the old cat door was commonly blown open by the wind, letting cold air into the house.  This one stays shut and that should help our heating bills.

Now the questions is, how long will it be before the raccoons acquire a magnet and learn how to unlatch this new cat door?

Wild Turkeys

Turkeys are another wild critter that has adapted well to the suburban landscape.  The local species, Meleagris gallopavo, was introduced (or perhaps reintroduced) to Northern California by the local fish and game department in the 1960's and 1970's, and their numbers are increasing.

I grew up in an area with a couple of domestic turkey farms and knew some turkey farmers.  They used to say that turkeys are so stupid that if you leave them out in the rain, they will stare up with their mouths open and drown.  I doubt this is true, probably just an urban (or rural?) myth, but turkeys are not very bright.  There was a turkey in Walnut Creek, CA, that would stand in the middle of the road, forcing cars to go around him.  He would strut and ruffle his feathers and play chicken with the oncoming cars.  Some said he was flirting with the cars, as if to attract them as a mate!   I know that car designers go to great lengths to make their cars look sexy, so perhaps they succeeded with this demographic.

One thing I noticed in these photos is the strange red conical feature above his beak. It's called a 'snood'.  The snood will grow to several inches long and droop over his bill when the turkey is a courting. The flap of skin under his chin is called a 'wattle', and the red growths on his neck are called 'Caruncles.' Who makes up these names?

This guy was wandering down Skyline Boulevard in Oakland a few months ago, possibly looking for a mate amoung the BMW's or Mercedes that inhabit the area.  A few months later, we saw the governor of California (governor-elect at the time), Jerry Brown, jogging along the same stretch of road. Yes, politicians and turkeys sometimes have a lot in common.

Tree Squirrels

Love them or hate them?  They have adapted well to the urban landscape.  The squirrels we have around our house are fox squirrels (Sciurus niger), and as the photos show, they are cute.

They can be fun to watch, I used to unwind in a hammock in my backyard on warm evenings after work. They would scurry about in the trees above my head and scold me with their chattery voices.  Every once in awhile they would run down a branch and take a flying leap to a branch in another tree a few feet away.  Quite a sight.  Sometimes I kept my camera with me, hoping to get a picture of these aerobatics, but I was never quick enough to get a good shot.

These guys can do some damage.  They chewed a hole in our roof and made a nest in our attic.  We could hear them running around up there almost every day.  The roof was quite old and needed to be replaced anyway, but we worried that if the roofers simply closed up the hole, the squirrels would be trapped in there to die.   The roofers assured us they would be working on the roof for a couple of days before they closed up the hole, and with all of the banging and pounding, the squirrels will leave on their own accord.  And they did.

Although they are excellent climbers, I saw one fall about 15 feet to the ground from a tree branch, while fighting with another squirrel.  I say they were fighting as they were making an awful racket with their clucking and chucking.  I can't translate what they were saying, but I am sure it is unprintable in 'G' rated blog.  In any case, the downed squirrel picked itself up off the ground, looked a bit dazed and confused for about 2 seconds, then ran back up into the tree.