San Diego: Sweetwater Part 2

A different day, we went to Sweetwater reservoir. It's mostly open and brushy, with a big old lake in the middle. The lake was packed with Western grebes, all making their characteristic "cree-ee-ik" sound.


In this inlet, we spotted all kinds of goodies. That white speck in the center is a great egret.

Tom got a really good shot of a Northern shoveler through the binoculars. It may look like a lady mallard at first, but then, look at the muppet-sized snout!


The shoveler, shoveling.

It was also a good spot for meadowlarks, and this one demonstrated something interesting that I noticed only when reviewing the photos. When the meadowlark is looking at you, it appears to have a black "V" on its chest.

But when it turns its head, you can see that the pattern of black feathers on its neck is different! It looks like maybe the long chin feathers cover part of the black shape normally. "V" for "very deceptive..."

Then there was this bright colored bug...


On our way back we spotted some distinctive roadkill... poor bobcat! Cause of death: no longer having a face! Some mammals I've only seen via roadkill, and this is one. Let's hope for only live bobcats in the future!

Natural Death, She Wrote

A retired English teacher with an insatiable curiosity... where Murder is concerned. Whenever she walks around Glen Echo Cove, dead bodies inevitably materialize. Usually first detected by their powerful smell, they often yield intriguing clues as to their demise.

This rat, for instance, was covered in half-healed scabs... and ants. While the evil marauding ants are the obvious culprit, closer inspection reveals that the ants are innocent! The gesture of the forepaws, as though the rat is trying to block something terrible from its vision, indicate that this rat died from overexposure to a That's So Raven marathon.

Here, a seagull is discovered face down in the brine. Probable cause of death: Underwater Head Syndrome.

The leisurely walk concludes with a stop at the scenic docks. But what's this? Has this seagull been presented with a cement shoe retirement gift from the Lake Merritt Mafia?

Closer examination and a thorough questioning reveal the culprit and the murder weapon are one and the same.
Yes, it was Naked Barbie, on the pier, with the Naked Barbie. Who would have expected the murderer to be this week's guest star!? I *knew* it wasn't Professor Plum!

Mystery Killer

Something has been quite efficiently killing things around the lake recently. The rampage began with a hapless cormorant...

...followed by an eviscerated duck...


...and a raccoon suffering from a deadly bitch-slap...

...and then the killer even.... smashed a dumpster?


What creature could be so powerful, so monstrous, so savage as to tyrannize downy and metallic alike?!

I blame...



FERAL CATS!

Surprise New Species!

What's this? A Barn Owl at the Lake Merritt visitor center?


Hmm, that taxdermy job might fool pigeons, but it didn't fool me. And come to think of it, that pigeon nest is right around the corner of the building from this guy, so I'm guessing the pigeons weren't fooled either.

Joy spring, or What we found in Briones

I got a good healthy dose of wildflowers, oak trees, and green rolling hills this weekend up at Briones Regional Park. I was hoping for more wildflowers actually, but we at least found some lupine, buttercup, and poppy... the usual. A few bird friends came out to play as well:

Here's a Black Phoebe doing the phoebe thing--sallying. They lurk on a branch or bit of barbed wire like the creepy flystalkers they are. And when they see a tiny little flying lunch--


--off they go in pursuit. The phoebe's family is the flycatchers, and even in other languages their name captures this habit. In Italian it's an acchiappamosche (catches-flies) or a pigliamosche (takes-flies). After it nabs the little doodad, it's back to the perch:

(I took this picture by putting the camera up to the binocualrs! Lowest-tech.) Phoebes sally. Two girl names for one little birdy.

Then we saw a fence lizard trying to become a tree-lizard:

And after poking around in a dead fallen tree, Tom found some weird orange things that might be eggs:


And a centipede:
You can tell it's a centipede because it has 100 legs, all of which it is willing to use to murder your babies. If you're a sowbug anyway.

Now for some forensics: MORE DEAD THINGS ALERT:

We smelled a skunkety skunk skunk while hiking, and that made us look around for the source of the smell. And we found it:


Ok, now here is what's super freaky about this. That thing on the right that looks like a possum tail? That's the spine. That pink thing on the left, near the stick? That's the skull, with the nose-end still in the skin and the rear part (the occipital and parietal) skinned and bare. And in the middle are some leg bones, paws, and an inside-out, holy skunk skin, Batman! Help us, Sherlock Bones! What kind of predator would do this? How could it do it without thumbs!? It is very weird. The internet is inconclusive on this subject, and as I often find, all the real knowledge is locked away behind JSTOR or other things that you have to pay for in order to get access. Wikipedia, HMPH. You can't answer THIS mystery.


Here is what I was able to piece together:
--Bears often turn their prey inside out and so do sea lions. Neither is a candidate in Briones.
--Coyotes, bobcats, and possibly foxes are big enough to kill a skunk, but would likely bury or at least move the carcass from the side of the trail where it was killed. So, they are probably not the killers.
--Racoons could probably kill a young skunk, but I didn't find any descriptions where they turned their prey inside out.
--Great Horned owls are known to kill skunks, but I couldn't find descriptions of what parts of the skunk they would eat, or what they might do to the carcass.
--Eagles are also said to skin out their prey like this, as well as leaving talon-holes in the skin. Although I've never seen one, eBird has sightings listed of Golden Eagles in Briones. However, they are also supposed to leave white streaks of poo everywhere around the carcass, which we did not observe.

Well, until I get a chance to dig deeper into some better documentation, this will remain a mystery for now. And now, just so you don't have nightmares about decapitated skunks, here's a little scrub jay and blue sky. SLEEEEEEEP! AND FORGEEEEEET....

Dead things, or, The Ciiiiiircle of Liiiiiife.

For the first part of the circle of life: here are two of the many Brewers' blackbirds that have shown up around the lake, ready to make a bunch of babies. They typically perch up high (like on the sycamore gnarls) and do their little "CHK" song, indicating that they will totally murder you if you if you go near the place they intend to nest. Lady blackbirds dig a dude who isn't afraid to attack something 100 times his size. Dude b-bird is on the left, lady b-bird on the right. Hard to tell in this shot, but she's the brown and sassy one, while he's an iridescent black bundle of rage.

****Part 2: DEATH. Warning, pictures of dead birds coming up!*******


Much like a naughty cat, Tom demonstrates his love for me by showing me dead things that he's found. It's a chance to look at animals more closely, since they aren't running away from you, or even moving. Today he pointed me to this ex-pigeon, found beneath a telephone pole.


We speculate that a hawk (maybe the Cooper's we've seen feasting on squab over the garage?) probably perched on the pole, ate the breast meat, and dropped the rest down for the cockroaches and feral cats.

Nom.

This seems to be a characteristic of the well-fed hawks around here; they'll only eat the choicest cut and leave the rest. Are they full? lazy? Or incapable of picking off smaller pieces? ("You have killed 10 pounds of pigeon, but can only carry 1 back to the wagon.")


Other things also die around Lake Merritt, from various other causes:

Roadkill possum (that's what you GET for being in the bike lane!):
Mystery coot:

With a cool lobed foot.

This coot also looks to have had its tasty flight muscles munched by a hawk. That or it choked after eating that entire package of Mambas.


And a Common Goldeneye killed by a feral cat and dragged beneath a bush:


Q: But Lisa, how do you know this ribcage belongs to a goldeneye? A: I found the body a few days before this photo was taken, and at that time all the feathers and the head were still on it. Naturally I didn't bring my camera that day, so I just poked it with a stick and vowed to come back next time it stopped raining.

I found these bones near the boathouse beach I like to call "Skeleton Cove!" Not only because it adds a tinge of piratey goodness, but also because, well, there are so many bones down there. Either the cats have been verrry busy, or the current washes every drowned mariner and bloated raccoon to that exact spot.

Other dead things found but not photographed at the Lake include: Canada geese killed by off-leash dogs, and a racoon that apparently fell out of a tree and died. "DOH!"