I Like Pigeons Because Nobody Else Does

 His browbeating finally eroded my resolve and we left San Diego yesterday morning for Palm Springs under the condition that I’d go as far as I could whether it meant reaching the pinnacle or not. We took the aerial tramway to an elevation of about 8516 feet and began the hike from there. From this elevation and up, the mountains are subalpine which means that they are just below the treeline and consist of plants specialized to grow in harsh conditions. The persistent blasting wind causes trees to grow crooked, stunted and twisted and allows only conifers to persist. On the side of the mountain where the wind isn’t blasting, the conifers grow tall and plentiful. It’s a completely different type of forest than what I am used to.

Mt San Jacinto itself is 10,834ft above sea level and the mountain range is the second highest in California. It forms the west border of the Coachella Valley and the San Bernardino Mountains form the east.  Palm Springs, at the north end of the valley, and all the other towns lie right on top of the San Andreas fault. I’ve spent much time in the mountains on the San Jacinto side working with the museum on our San Jacinto Centennial Resurvey study, but we have not yet done any surveys at high elevations.

It’s a 12 mile round-trip from the tram’s lodge to the peak of Mt San Jacinto. “No way in hell am I going to make this” I whined probably ten times. And indeed, I didn’t…but I made it a lot further than I thought I would. When hiking above ten thousand feet it seems as if it’s an endeavour of diminishing returns – the higher you get, the harder it is and progress comes to a crawl. We made it to around 10,500 and decided to turn back. We probably could have done it if we’d taken our time and just gutted it out, but I simply didn’t have the mental fortitude at that point.

We ended up having a great time, despite my expectations to the contrary. That’s probably our last hurrah here in California before we head back east.

Gene and I went to Pt Loma yesterday at low tide to poke around the tide pools and enjoy the coastal scenery. The weather was beautiful, but offshore we could see the marine layer in the distance. At one point when we were heading north along the shore, I turned around to see the southern area completely enveloped in a blanket of fog…it’s not really fog, but the marine layer air mass. It overtook us in a matter of seconds. Bizarre. Some days we wake up to find everything grey and foggy, but a short drive across the bridge and it’s clear and cloudless and it almost looks as if there’s an invisible wall holding it back at a certain point. It’s almost always present, at varying distances from the shore, and makes sunset viewing difficult. From Wikipedia:

A marine layer an air mass which develops over the surface of a large body of water such as the ocean or large lake in the presence of a temperature inversion. The inversion itself is usually initiated by the cooling effect of the water on the surface layer of an otherwise warm air mass. As it cools, the surface air becomes denser than the warmer air above it, and thus becomes trapped below it. The layer may thicken through turbulence generated within the developing marine layer itself. It may also thicken if the warmer air above it is lifted by an approaching area of low pressure. The layer will also gradually increase its humidity by evaporation of the ocean or lake surface, as well as by the effect of cooling itself. “Fog” will form within a marine layer where the humidity is high enough and cooling sufficient to produce condensation. Stratocumulus will also form at the top of a marine layer in the presence of the same conditions there
In the case of coastal California the offshore marine layer is typically propelled inland by a pressure gradient which develops as a result of intense heating inland, blanketing coastal communities in cooler air which, if saturated, also contains fog. The fog can last until midday when the heat of the sun is frequently strong enough to evaporate it. An approaching frontal system or trough can also drive the marine layer onshore.
A marine layer will disperse and break up in the presence of instability such as may be caused by the passage of frontal system or trough, or any upper air turbulence which reaches the surface. A marine layer can also be driven away by sufficiently strong winds.

Good news – Gene has accepted a position with Lancaster Radiology in Lancaster PA, our hometown. We never figured we’d move back there – it’s seriously conservative which is at odds with a lot of what I enjoy and think, but you can find something shitty about anywhere you go and the benefits certainly outweigh any detractors. I simply don’t have the desire or wherewithall to start over, yet again, in a new locale. The luster of novel living situations has worn off and it will be a welcome change to live in a community that’s already rife with friends and family.  He will start work around July 1st, but we’re planning on skipping out of San Diego near the beginning of June and then possibly squeezing in a trip to Europe before he starts.

We had a blast in Yosemite…but the dogs didn’t. We’ll never take them on vacation again. Sinbad can’t stand any deviation from his usual routine and when Little Buddy wasn’t glued to the gas stove, he was shivering. Gene described it best when he said that they looked like we were holding them hostage – they sat with ears pinned, looking plaintive and worried for 4 days. The Little Buddy puked in the car as we wound our way down out of the Sierra Nevada Range.

But we humans had a great time. Yosemite is one of those places that is not able to be described verbally – you just have to see it for yourself in order to understand just how magnificent it really is. I had grandiose visions of capturing that magnificence with shots rivalling those of Ansel Adams. We bought a new wide-angle lens specifically for this trip and was especially anxious to break it in in Yosemite. I played with it around the house for a few days and arrogantly supposed I had it figured out, but nothing could’ve been further from the truth. My pictures suck. All of them. I’ve been so focused on up-close and macro work the last few years that I didn’t realize that landscape photography is a whole new world that is going to require remedial training.

We stayed in a cabin about 2 miles from the park’s west entrance and spent our days hiking the park’s various trails and sitting on the cabin’s porch watching the birds and relaxing. It was Shangri-la. No phone, no traffic, no sirens, no diesel smoke wafting through the kitchen door, no black soot from overhead aircraft settling on the windowsills, no barking dogs, no kids, no nothing. It was tough to return to San Diego because we probably could have lived there quite happily. The only sounds were the wild birds and the gentle clucking of the owner’s chickens who were nice enough to provide us with breakfast every morning.

Consider these “snapshots”:

We walked up Cuyamaca Peak yesterday for the second time. It’s the second highest mountain in San Diego County at 6,512 feet (1,985 m). It’s an easy walk since there’s a paved fire road the whole way to the top but it’s so steep and the elevation change so great that I’m a real slowpoke on the ascent. We always see animals, but have yet to spot a mountain lion which is not uncommon in this area. A woman was killed on the fire road in 1996 while jogging.  But the turkeys, ravens and acorn woodpeckers are entertainment enough.

The burned trees are leftovers from the 2005 Cedar Fire that burned 90% of the park. I read in some park literature that it was one of the biggest human-caused fires in California history.

Here’s what Phil sent out to our supporters and other interested parties after our trip last week (text only, I added the photos):

Dear San Jacinto friends and colleagues,

We found a junkyard

Last week Melody McFarland, Jim Berrian, and I spent from Monday to Wednesday, 8 to 10 September at Valle Vista (just east of Hemet at the west base of the San Jacinto Mountains ), resurveying the site Harry Swarth covered from 30 August to 5 September 1908.  Actually, the site we covered, along the wash of the San Jacinto River at the east end of Valle Vista, is about 2 miles northeast of the 1908 site, which is now covered by orange orchards and the concrete-lined channel of Bautista Creek.  We selected it as a surrogate, as it supports the only remaining alluvial scrub at the same elevation in the general area. It has been designated for conservation as open space and wildlife habitat.  It is under the jurisdiction of the Eastern Municipal Water District, and we thank Joe Lewis, Director of Engineering Services, for authorization and access to cover this site.

This visit was focused on birds and invertebrates; intensive surveys of mammals and reptiles will come on a subsequent visit when more of our team is able to participate.  But we wanted one survey to correspond in time as closely as possible to the time of Harry Swarth’s visit in 1908.  Like Harry Swarth, we experienced the “blistering heat” of which he complained (what do you expect in Hemet in late summer?!), but at least we did not endure the dust storms that afflicted him in 1908. 

Mockingbird

Ken Weaver also covered the site on the morning of 9 August 2008, and his results are tabulated with last week’s in the attached spreadsheet.

The Valle Vista site is interesting because it originally hosted a subset of what I am calling the “Aguanga fauna.”  That is, species of characteristically desert

green lynx spider

distribution that have an isolated population on the west side of the mountains, centered at Aguanga just north of Temecula Creek in south-central Riverside County.  Of birds these include (among others not reported from Valle Vista) the Ladder-backed Woodpecker and Black-throated Sparrow, of mammals the White-tailed Antelope Squirrel, and of reptiles the Zebra-tailed Lizard and Long-nosed Leopard Lizard.  Because the 1908 expedition did not extend south to Aguanga this biogeographically interesting region has gone underappreciated over the last century, and it has been questioned whether the birds were resident in the area or just postbreeding dispersers.  Ken Weaver has been studying the Aguanga region and is finalizing a paper on the area’s birds.

Our striking finding at Valle Vista for 2008 is that none of the “Aguanga fauna” may still survive at Valle Vista.  We hope to find some on future visits, but the Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Black-throated Sparrow, Zebra-tailed Lizard, and

Western toad

White-tailed Antelope Squirrel, at least, should have been seen easily in 4 days if present.  In 1908 Harry Swarth commented on the importance of cactus fruit, noting that the four antelope squirrels he collected were stained inside and out with juice of the fruit.  In 2008, prickly pear cacti were sparse, low, and not looking very healthy; I saw only one fruit, already nearly dried up.  So an important component of the ecosystem may no longer be functioning.  The decline of cactus undoubtedly contributed to the disappearance of the Cactus Wren too.  Similarly, Harry Swarth commented on yucca pods as a food source in 1908; in 2008 yuccas too (both schidigera and whipplei) were few and unimpressive, lacking fruit.

Bewick's wren

A couple of other characteristically arid-country species were barely present in 2008. In 1908, the California Gnatcatcher “was one of the most abundant species” at Valle Vista; in 2008, Ken Weaver found just one on 9 August and we found none from 8 to 10 September. In 1908 Brewer’s Sparrow was “fairly common,” with 3 specimens collected; in 2008 I saw just a single individual each on 9 and 10 September.  It’s not clear in what role Brewer’s Sparrow occurs at this site; most likely it is just a migrant, but a few years ago Bob McKernan found it nesting not far away at Winchester.

cucumber beetle

The message seems to be that when enough species are extirpated from a site interesting biogeographic patterns can be threatened with extirpation as well.  And in spite of the desertification of the climate, it is the seemingly desert-adapted species that have suffered the most in this case. Ken Weaver reports that all the species of the “Aguanga fauna” now missing at Valle Vista still survive at Aguanga, highlighting the conservation importance of that area.

On the plus side, we saw 35 species of birds Harry Swarth missed in 1908, more than doubling the list for Valle Vista.  Among these are many of the usual suspects, the Red-shouldered Hawk, Anna’s Hummingbird, Nuttall’s Woodpecker, Black Phoebe, Cassin’s Kingbird, American Crow, and Common Raven, not to mention the introduced House Sparrow, European Starling, Domestic Pigeon, and Eurasian Collared Dove.  In some cases local conditions at the site clearly contributed: the proliferation of the tree tobacco is providing nectar for 3 species of hummingbirds in 2008; Harry Swarth noted no hummingbirds at Valle Vista in 1908.  The percolation basins in the floodplain, dry in late summer, are grown up now with thickets of sunflowers, providing a bonanza of seeds for the American and Lesser Goldfinches; Harry Swarth noted no goldfinches at Valle Vista in 1908.

To me the most interesting addition among birds was the Rufous-crowned Sparrow.  Along with Snow Creek and Banning, Valle Vista makes the third site at which we have found this sedentary species missed completely in 1908.  Yet Harry Swarth found and collected them less than two weeks after leaving Valle Vista, in the Santa Ana Mountains on the opposite side of the San Jacinto Plain.  I suspect that the species has spread, aided at least by fires in the San Gorgonio Pass.

We were disappointed by the low diversity of reptiles, especially as Jim Berrian is an experienced herpetologist.  But I hope you enjoy Melody McFarland’s photo of the Red Diamond Rattlesnake, a species missed at Valle Vista in 1908.  The site is riddled by abundant rodent burrows, so it is likely to be interesting when our mammalogists are able to work here.  The seasonal flow of the San Jacinto River leaves dried mud, especially in the percolation basins, that is great for prints, so a tracker better than I should be able to identify from them species beyond the raccoon that I could confirm.  In any case, we look forward to future visits to this site, important as the only 1908 site at a low elevation at the west base of the San Jacinto Mountains.

honeybee

Thanks very much again to Joe Lewis for authorizing us, to Karin Cleary-Rose for her advice in this area and suggesting the site we covered as a logical surrogate site, to Ken Weaver for his help and knowledge of this area, and to Melody and Jim for their help in the field.

The Valle Vista trip was our last of the summer; the next will be to Little Paradise in Palm Canyon in the third week of November, beginning our winter surveys.

Thanks for your interest in our study.

California mouse

The museum’s mammal people, Scott and Dana, as well as bat dude Drew, were instrumental particpants in the expedition. The desert is home to a variety of rodents, but I didn’t get many photos of them since I was busy with my own work. Some of the animals captured were wood rats, kangaroo rats and a variety of mice. They put bait and cameras out for mountains lions, but unfortunately none were seen.

With the proper equipment, there’s a whole ‘nother world to explore at night. Well, and without it. On Wednesday night I was awoken by the distinct sound of raccoons purring. I looked out my tent’s window and saw five babies clinging to the tree about 5 feet from where I was sitting. Adorable. Their mother called to them from a distance and they scrambled away, presumably to have their little arses kicked for getting so close to the humans. We also had a skunk haul ass through camp with Dana and I in hot pursuit trying desperately to snap photos with uncooperative cameras. It wasn’t so dark, however, that we couldn’t see his tail held high, so we didn’t get that close.

The pipe in the lower right corner is the microphone portion of the Anabat device

Anyway, back to the night and equipment…there’s a device called an Anabat which you can see in the photo. It’s an extremely sensitive device that records ultrasonic bat calls during designated intervals. Its memory card is removed the following day and downloaded onto a computer that then shows sonograms of any bat sounds it captured. Each bat has a distinctive sound pattern, so you can determine what species are present by analyzing its respective sonogram.

Another method for surveying bats is mist netting. A fine net is placed in a location that bats frequent and, if you’re lucky, they fly into it instead of up and over as many of them are wont to do. I’ve seen a lot of bats, but never up close like this. They are seriously impressive animals. The museum is in posession of a night vision monocular and I made the grave error of looking through it. I’ve been sort of wanting one for awhile, but that thing made me salivate. It was incredible. Like green daylight. Now I can add that to my lengthy Lust List of Expensive Devices and Gadgetry.

Weighed, measured and released, hopefully without being bitten.

 

Big brown bat. Check out those teeth

wood rat. cute

I’m having a hell of an annoying time trying to find a decent set-up for this blog that will accommodate tables and photos. If you don’t have your browser window maximized, the photos will be all bunched up. I bought textbooks for the Pattern Making and French classes that I’m taking next week. Imagine the look on my face upon discovering that the French textbook cost $182. Unbelievable. Enough bitching…

In addition to being camp cook, I handled invertebrate collection by means of pitfall trap. Pitfall trap equates to nothing more than plastic cup sunk in a hole in the ground. It’s a cheap and convenient way to sample an area for neat creepy crawlies and other ground-dwelling creatures. A pitfall trap can be any size including five-gallon buckets that yield some really impressive animals like larger lizards and mammals. In this case we used plastic cups that someone scored from a convenience store.

Upon arrival on Monday we dug twenty holes in four different sites and inserted cups for a total of 80 traps. Each trap was checked every morning and representative animals assessed. The 1908 expedition didn’t bother with invertebrates so we don’t have any comparison data. I am hoping that on the next trip I’ll be able to do a little more with collection methods.

In addition to insects, we trapped scorpions, spiders and lizards. We were hoping for a shrew in one of the sites, but there are either no shrews or they’re too smart to blunder into our traps.

A ubiquitous beetle that we found in great numbers is this:

Eleodes in defensive posture

a darkling beetle of the family Tenebrionidae, species Eleodes. These beetles are found in desert settings throughout the western part of the US and are active most often at dusk and dawn. One would think that this crepuscular habit of foraging would be to their great disadvantage – a jet black beetle against a light-colored sandy background is quite conspicuous to the keen eyes of nocturnal predators.

When this beetle is disturbed, it assumes the defensive rear-up posture that you see pictured above and readies itself to unleash a rank cocktail of offensive chemicals. It’s foul-smelling and irritating defensive fluid is highly effective against most attackers, especially ants, and is composed of 1,4-benzoquinones, several hydrocarbons and caprylic acid. What is all this stuff, you ask. It doesn’t matter, but trust me when I say you don’t want to know. It positively reeks.

This species is capable of only a mild sting

I am positively ashamed to say that before two weeks ago I had never been to Longwood Gardens in Kennet Square. Me, nature-lover extraordinaire, never visited.  My sister came up with the most excellent idea to take our guests there for the day and it was fabulous. We were there just at the time the fruit trees were blooming and the weather was perfect.

We did a few more things later on during the week, but I’ll post photos of them in the near future. I had a fairly exciting two days at work today and last friday. Plover chicks are hatching and we’re banding them as best we can. Since they leave the nest within just hours of hatching, you’re dependent on a lot of luck and a little bit of perseverance. For instance, just this morning we checked on a nest and saw the tip of a tiny bill poking through a small hole in the center of a network of spider-web cracks on the egg. We returned just two hours later and the chick was out of the egg and hiding under a plant adjacent to the nest. Any later and we may have missed the bird completely. These birds are born precocial, meaning they are ready to go at birth as opposed to altricial birds which need parental care.  They are probably the cutest baby birds I’ve seen (these are from last week):

Notice their coloration. They’re almost indistinguishable from the surrounding sand. Here are some shots from today. The new chick is still wet.

Other news, Sinbad and I have started taking obedience classes at the San Diego Humane Society. Tonight is our second night of class and he’s doing very well…of course, every time I say or write that to someone he does something like pull the blankets out of his crate and pee on them or climb up on the ottoman, proclaim himself king by showing his teeth, and then refusing to move.  But lately he’s taken on more of a submissive role in response to Gene and I which has been a nice change.

I had heard a long time ago that there was an elephant seal rookery somewhere along the coast of California. Fortunately, a short internet search revealed that one of them was about halfway between here and Monterey along the Pacific Coast Highway and happened to be on our route. I wasn’t expecting much (it’s my style to plan for the worst then I’m never disappointed) but I was pleasantly wrong.

We made it through LA without succumbing victims to a highway shootout and not long after leaving that cesspool in the dust, the landscape transformed into those postcard scenes of California that are disseminated all over the world: breathtaking rocky coastlines, azure blue water and the green rolling hills peppered with cows and horses. We took a break for lunch in a touristy village with stores called “shoppes”. Faux quaint. Kind of like the Amish version of any small town in south-east Lancaster PA, the theme being “wine” instead of Amish. All I could think about was what was up the road at the rookery as I ate my avocado sandwich.  Real live elephant seals? Empty sand? Fat tourists? Score on the first and third accounts.

The two-lane winding road suddenly gave way to a snarl of cars coming and exiting a parking lot on the coast side of the road, but we managed to squeeze through the scrum into the lot. We got out of the car and heard barking, wheezing, crying, whining, farting, and blowing noises….and saw this:

Of course, this elicited my stock phrase upon seeing a new animal: HOLY SHIT! and I started snapping photos. The light was not in my favor this time of day, but c’est la vie.  The seal viewing area was designed for optimum viewing by humans and minimal disturbance to the animals. It’s not visible on this photo,but on the left side was a raised fenced walkway that allowed people to look down on the animals. The seals seemed completely oblivious to the hundreds of people watching. The photo shows a rather placid scene, but it was anything but. Babies were wailing to be fed, mothers were bellowing, flippers were throwing sand, western gulls quarreled for the newborns’ placentas, Brewer’s blackbirds scoured in between mountains of blubber looking for scraps of who-knows-what, and the males growled and bellowed and inflated their snouts in intimidating authoritarian displays.

It was thought that these animals were extinct in the 1880′s but a small population remained off the cost of Baja California in Mexico. First protected by Mexico and then the US, the seals rebounded and today there is an estimated population of about 170,000 animals. For ten months of the year, elephant seals are at sea feeding almost constantly and only come to shore twice a year – to molt and either to breed or rest if a young animal. The females are beached for 5 weeks while they give birth and nurse their pups, the males up to 100 days. None of them eat during this time but survive off the massive fat stores that they’ve built up over the months at sea.

The size of the bulls was simply unbelievable. They typically weigh between 3000 and 5000 pounds, sometimes more. Each monolithic male was surrounded by his harem of females with pups. I’m not sure how many ladies he can tend, but it seemed as if there were about 10 females around each male.

It’s always thrilling for me to see a new animal for the first time, but this was especially exciting. It’s not often that a person has the opportunity to see enormous wild animals at such close proximity carrying out natural behaviors. You can actually stand on the viewing platform and watch the cows giving birth! I could have sat there all day, but Gene likes to get from point A to point B in the shortest time possible, so I was regrettably forced to leave. 

This is Leslie’s first time in San Diego so I took her to La Jolla to see the seals. It’s the start of pupping season and there were a lot of animals hauled out on the beach. Unfortunately, the city government recently…

…rejected San Diego’s request to reinstall the rope barrier this winter to protect seals during their pupping season at Children’s Pool beach.

Read the whole story here. That means that the public will have full and legal access to the beach while the seals are giving birth.  They will be open to molestation by the rapacious cads who opposed the barrier. Distubing these animals is a voilation of the Marine Mammal Act which is punishable by law and I don’t understand why the filthy molesters aren’t prosecuted.  I just can’t figure these people out. They’re lucky I’m not king of the USA.

The poor bugger won’t be smiling in a couple of weeks when the females are aborting birthing pups while simultaneously fleeing some idiot swimmer.

Some days you just get lucky. I took this from the north end of the island on the base this evening.

The yin and yang of life, or inyo 陰陽 in Japanese, sometimes is not so subtle. I got all these great snowy egret photos today, but I dropped my cell phone in the water while climbing around on the rocks to get these shots. It’s drying right now and I am hopeful that its saltwater bath hasn’t ruined it. But the thing that really pisses me off is that I also dropped my lens cap and wasn’t able to retrieve it.

Some friends of mine are coming to San Diego tomorrow. Lee has a conference to attend and they’re staying at the Hotel del Coronado which is pretty swanky. His wife Leslie is coming along so we’re going to do some sightseeing. I’m really excited to see some old friends from home because the “making friends” endeavor out here is proceeding at a glacial pace.

We boarded the Hornblower Aventure yesterday under cloudless blue skies, found seats on the upper deck and departed the harbor promptly at 1:30pm. The water was as smooth as a suburban lawn. A dozen or so Heerman’s gulls saw us off and several pigeons landed on the deck as if to wish us a good voyage.  There were a couple of kids on board, none of whom were screaming and seemed relatively well-behaved. In between announcements on the PA system, Jimmy Buffet’s soothing Margaritaville was playing. Wow, this is going to be a great trip, I thought to myself. Our captain, in a voice reminiscent of Ned Flanders, announced on the PA system that the sailing would be fine, yes indeedy - great weather and small ocean swells. Hallelujah! I was as enthusiastic as a Labrador puppy.

It took about 30 minutes to reach the end of the bay where it meets the open sea as indicated by a series of buoys that were draped with sea lions sleeping in the warm afternoon sun, out of reach of the frigid Pacific water. It was a grand afternoon – birds, seals, whales forthcoming. What more could a nature lover ask for? “Did you feel that?” Gene asked me.  I had no idea what he was talking about. I was too busy taking photos and watching for our quarry. “It’s the sea swell.” (cue the Jaws music). He might have said “Did you feel that? There’s a cave troll coming this way to eat us alive.” and I would have felt the same sinking, black feeling of utter doom suck every joule of heat from my body. I wilted.

Captain Ned Flanders doled out tips for “those that might happen to feel a bit queasy” which included staring at the horizon, stay outside in the air, blah, blah, blah. I’d been through this drill more times than I can count and know that there isn’t a whole lot a person can do to stave it off. It was pretty cold out on the open ocean and the blowing wind made it even worse. I was freezing…but not for long. That familiar creeping hot sensation was just the first sign. I took my jacket off figuring maybe if I stayed feeling cold, I’d last a little bit longer. Ha ha. Right. “Attention everyone!” chirped Ned. “One of our guests has just spotted a spray on the left side of the boat at about 11 o’clock.” and everyone, including myself, accordingly ran to the left side of the boat. I saw the whale spout once but that was when the second stage of events leading to fulminant motion sickness struck; hot panic.  I had to return to my seat on the right side of the boat and try and gather myself. But it was inevitable. I was terminal.  All I could do now was try and stifle the french fries and turkey sandwich that was screaming to be loosed.

The commotion on the other side of the boat was too much and I managed to make it back to try and see the whale. Captain Ned said in a hushed voice, “Now, I need to use my golf announcer’s voice here so we don’t scare the whale. I think she has a calf with her, so it’s really important that everyone stay as quiet as possible. Again, I think that is a mother with a calf and these whales can hear very well, so please keep your voices down.” WWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! some little brat wailed just at that instant. He continued to make annoying screeching and wailing sounds and his father did absolutely nothing. I was in no mood entertaining anything that would make me feel any worse, so I went back to my solo seat on the right side of the boat.

As I sat there staring rigidly at the horizon, wallowing in nausea, it occurred to me how lucky I’d be if the whale decided to come over to my side of the ship. And guess what! She did! I saw a spout and then a tail. I wasn’t about to alert the others, but just then Ned announced her location and I was immediately surrounded by people, one of whom insisted on sticking her pendulous gut in my face. In a Herculean effort, I managed to lift my camera and snap a photo. About as good as the platypus photo, but evidence nonetheless.

Gene was fit as a fiddle, drinking beer and having a great time whale watching. I felt bad that I was such a wet blanket, but I fought it tooth and nail and was still overcome. At one point I even said “I’ve got to get the hell off this thing.” Gene got me a barf bag from the ship’s well-stocked barf bag dispensary.  I gave up on the whale watching and concentrating on not needing the barf bag. I was successful and made the 3-hour tour without an mortifying public puking episode.

We only saw two whales the whole trip which, according to Captain Ned and the San Diego Natural History Museum docents on board, was unusual for this time of year. Typically they see 15 to 20 whales at a time among the group of around 26,000 individuals that migrate along the coast of California. The whales spend the summer feeding in the food-rich waters of the arctic, and then swim south along the coast to the bays of Baja California, where they mate and nurse their young. But the last few years have seen normal migration patterns disturbed and the whales are migrating later each year.  Coincidentally, just today I read a New York Times book review of No Way Home, The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrationsby David S. Wilcove. From the review:

Their migrations speak to us in some unfathomably deep way. Birders flock to stopover sites like Cape May, N.J., to watch birds on their journeys to the far north in the spring and back to the tropics in the fall. Eco-tourists head for the Serengeti to train binoculars on herds of wildebeest that stretch to the horizon. American schoolchildren watch monarch butterflies hatch from chrysalises in their classrooms and then see them off on their trip to Mexico.

But in his new book “No Way Home,” David Wilcove, a Princeton biologist, warns that “the phenomenon of migration is disappearing around the world.”

Maybe it’s a fluke that they’re late, who knows, but you just have to wonder. Humans have totally shit on the whole planet so the pessimistic misanthrope in me is inclined to believe that it’s the result of a breakdown somewhere along the line – less food, warmer water, etc. And I don’t think that whale watching tours are helping them either Despite the captain’s best efforts to avoid disturbing the mother whale and her calf, she was clearly doing her best to elude us. Gene and I felt bad about that.

To my great relief the ship arrived back in the bay and as if by magic, the seasickness was gone almost immediately. And what good timing, because it was right before we sailed by a large aggregation of sea lions snoozing on top of the cages from an old fish farm so I was at the ready with my camera.

Unfortunately a nagging, low-grade nausea stayed with me for the rest of the evening, preventing me from getting too festive on the eve of the new year. Gene and I had a nice evening at home and I managed to choke down a couple of glasses of champagne.

I read on the internet yesterday that the southern California coast was supposed to have massive waves today on the order of 15 to 20 feet high. One of my recurrent nightmare themes is big waves (the others are tornadoes and less commonly, attack by rats. But I’m not afraid in the least of rats in real life. Go figure.) and last night I had yet another dream about them. In the dream Gene and I were in a car driving along a rocky coast. An enormous wave slammed the car, and when the water receded, Gene was pinned between the car and the rock face. But I planned on seeing them despite the ridiculous dream.

Anyway, I left for La Jolla this morning at 8am thinking that I could get some dramatic shots of the huge waves crashing on the rocks and wasn’t disappointed. I joined hundreds of other people gathered to see the show. It was a spectacular natural event and I’m glad I didn’t miss it. There were lots of surfers out, but it seemed that the great majority of them just floated around in the water and didn’t do anything. Periodically one of them would get on a wave and ride and the assembled crowd would hoot and holler in approval, especially if the guy wiped out and was crushed.

I’ve never seen waves that large, so this was thrilling for me and a lot of other people, I’m sure. I saw a lot of professional photographers there which is always a good sign that your at an event of some magnitude. I met a woman there who had the mother of all Canon cameras and accompanying lenses – she had the Canon EOS 1-D Mark III and a 4oomm lens.  You don’t see that setup out and about too often. Well, in Japan you do, but not here in the States – they seem to go whole hog with their hobbies much more so than Americans. After I finished drooling and composed myself, I had a nice chat with her about what camera body I should buy next. She gave me some good advice. Now all I need to do is rob a bank. I actually saw another guy with a 600mm lens and the same camera, but he didn’t seem to interested in talking.

I didn’t see any seal-haters, thankfully, so it was a nice morning. When I left at 11am the traffic coming into LaJolla was backed up for miles…but those people missed the best part because by that time the fury had already started to subside a bit and it wasn’t as dramatic as earlier.  I took a lot of photos, but Little Buddy is due for his daily walk so here’s all I have time for right now.

Last weekend Gene and I went to nearby Cuyamaca Rancho State Park and did a 10 mile hike. We only saw a few other people which was really nice since our intent was to get away from them in the first place.  This is a great place to see wildlife – we saw many lizards and new birds so I’m going to have to go back there soon on a photography expedition.

Tonight we’re going to one of Gene’s coworker’s homes for dinner and then into San Diego to a club called the Casbah to see my favorite band of all time, Southern Culture on the Skids. They’re from Chapel Hill and I’ve seen them twice when we lived in NC. They’re actually better live than on a CD which is something you can’t say about many musicians.

Tomorrow off on another hike, maybe we’ll return to Anza Borrego.