Professor Steven Goldsmith

A short post…

…for my vertebrate biology students, as a follow up to the recent post about Pinnacles National Park.

The image below was taken by an Austin College alumna, at a National Park Service facility, sometime in the past. The vertebrate biology student who gets closest to a) where and b) when this image was captured gets to decide (within reason) what I cook for the class next.

Submit your guesses via email. I will announce the winner next Monday.

PS I still have the bandana, the sunglasses, and the vest.

Pretty pictures part 3a: Plants

In looking back over recent posts, I realized that I had promised (in Pretty Pictures part 2) a “pretty pictures part 3: Plants, Fungi, and Animals.” I also realized that I could do parts 3a (plants), 3b (fungi), and 3c (animals). Please bear with me as I work through these. This is mostly going to be images of plants, fungi, and animals, with some narrative of what they are.

I spent several years in the desert southwest, and have returned there for teaching and research in the years since, so I have lots of desert plant images. Here are a couple of general views of the desert southwest

Ocotillo (AKA Devil’s coachwhip) is an interesting plant of the Chihuahuan and Sonoran desert

Barrel cacti are endemic to the Sonoran desert. Native Americans used their fruits as a food source but only in times of extreme need. The flesh of barrel cacti contains lots of water, but most also contain toxins that are dangerous or even deadly.

Blind Prickly Pear (related to other prickly pears) is distinguished by its lack of spines, but also by its prolific production of glochids, which blow out of the pads into the eyes of cattle, which is how it gets its name

One of my least favorite of Chihuahuan desert plants is “lechuguilla,” whose scientific name is Agave lechuguilla, whose common name I learned as “ankle dagger.” (If you google “ankle dagger”, you get this.) The common name “ankle dagger” is well earned…

The definitive cactus of the Sonoran desert is the saguaro

This pair was photographed in Estes Canyon, on the hike to Bull Pasture, in Organ Pipe National Monument during a January Term trip in 2003. Here are a couple of other images from that trip

 

 

Vertebrate Biology part 2

It has been a while since part 1. We have seen a variety of relatively large, conspicuous vertebrate species, like mallards

Canada geese

 

Raptors like Red-shouldered hawks

And American Kestrels

 

We have seen Killdeers several times; I posted about them previously

We are now focused on the small, fast, often cryptic forest bird species. These include tufted titmice (or are they tufted titmouses?)

 

Northern mockingbirds

Carolina chickadees

 

And northern cardinals

 

These seemingly cute, docile creatures are actually quite aggressive. We observed a trio of tufted titmice chasing one another in the bare branches of an oak tree at Waterloo Lake Park in Denison, Texas. My assumption was that they were all males, but Tufted Titmice are not sexually dimorphic, so I am not sure about that. Mockingbirds are also not sexually dimorphic, but you can tell males because they are the ones who are calling their little syrinxes out this time of year. Same with Carolina Chickadees, although their calls are a high-pitched, raspy almost buzzing sound – once you have heard them, they are quite distinctive. And of course the Northern Cardinal has both a distinctive call and striking sexual dimorphism. See the female above and the male below.

Point Lobos State Reserve

Just sount of Carmel on the Monterey Peninsula is Point Lobos State Reserve, which is right on the coast. This is a rugged, rocky shoreline in most places

with a few spots where scuba divers can enter – although there are not many parts of the reserve that are good for diving. This is a great spot for marine life, especially birds and mammals. Becky and I hiked the North Shore trail starting at Whaler’s Cove

where we saw groups of sea otters playing among the kelp

We eventually hiked around to the Sea Lion Point trail, which goes out, oddly enough, onto Sea Lion Point. This is a rocky promontory that juts out into Sea Lion Cove, where, sure enough, there were California sea lions both in the water (the water is really rough here)

And on a couple of small, rocky islands out in the cove

In addition to the otters and the sea lions, we saw a couple of small pods of Gray Whales, one a couple of hundred meters off the shore, and the second one maybe twice that. They were far enough out that I couldn’t get a photo with the small digital camera I was using. They are migrating northward this time of year.

The substrate at Point Lobos is an interesting mix of igneous and sedimentary rocks, which reflect the complex tectonic history of this rugged coastline. There were some really cool conglomerate rocks

In addition to the marine mammals, we saw several seabirds, including Brandt’s Cormorants, Pelagic Cormorants, and Western Gulls

When we got back around to Whaler’s Cove, there was a Great Blue Heron foraging by standing on a kelp bed. They are quite adaptable!

Pinnacles National Park – East

Pinnacles National Park (east of Soledad, California) has the unusual feature of having a west side and an east side. The unusual part is that you can’t get to the east side from the west side without leaving the park, driving around it (to the south or to the north) and re-entering from the east. The only other national park that I know of that shares this feature is Grand Canyon, with its South Rim and North Rim.

Becky and I hiked from the west to the high peaks area on Sunday. Here we are at the peak

Becky was teaching at the Valley Heritage Quilt Guild in King City, so I went to Pinnacles East, which is less than an hour’s drive from King City. The drive goes uphill to the east over a low range of hills, then turns north through somewhat of a valley between two ranges of hills. There is agriculture (some farming, some ranching), but the population density is very low. Very different from what most people think of as California.

Pinnalces East is more developed, greener, and has more hiking trails than Pinnacles West. There is a nice visitor center, a campground, even a swimming pool. There are several trailheads, many of which eventually link to the High Peaks trail that includes the “steep and narrow” stretch described in the last post. I was not interested in going back up to the “steep and narrow” so I hiked some of the approach trails, including Condor Gulch and Bear Gulch. Condor Gulch was fairly easy, but I only went in a mile or so. I hiked the Bear Gulch trail, through the “caves” to the reservoir.

The “caves” are not caves in the “Carlsbad” or “Mammoth” sense, but are simply large and smaller boulders that have crashed down into a steep, narrow gulch, leaving a winding, treacherous path – there are steep steps with rails here as there are along the “steep and narrow” trail. Part of the reason that the gulch is filled with boulders is that the San Andreas Fault runs a few miles from Pinnacles. I was not really nervous about an earthquake hitting at just the wrong time and crushing me with boulders, but I did not enjoy the passage through the caves.

Once out of the caves, getting to the reservoir required climbing another flight of steep, narrow steps

The reservoir was down some but not as much as I expected

For several reasons, I decided to go back to the trailhead along the Rim Trail rather than back down through the caves. There were several groups with small children coming along behind me, and these were definitely one-way trails. Plus I was not keen on climbing downward through the caves – down is always harder than up. I got back to the Bear Gulch trailhead without incident.

 

 

Pinnacles National Park

Becky and I recently hiked a trail in Pinnacles National Park – West. This was the Juniper Canyon trail, which gives the most direct access to the popular “steep and narrow” part of the High Peaks trail. Because it gives the most direct access, it also gives the shortest and steepest access. The trail maps say the loop is 4.3 miles with 1215 feet elevation gain (and loss!). Becky’s fitbit said we walked 5.25 miles and climbed 150 flights of stairs. I think it overestimated the former and underestimated the latter.

This is a trail that I have hiked once before. The views are spectacular. The park is called Pinnacles for obvious reasons.

But I also remember thinking, “when are these switchbacks going to end?” They really don’t end until you get to the top, where you can see Pinnacles National Park – East. This is a view of the "high peaks" from the east side...

Some of the pinnacles are interesting to look at up close

The “steep and narrow” part of the High Peaks trail is appropriately named. This is about a 0.7 mile stretch of trail, and in many places it goes along very narrow ledges with metal handrails anchored into the rock. In other places there are very steep, rough steps drilled and hewn into the rock, often also with metal handrails. These are definitely one-way trails.

We hiked the trail on a Sunday, and there were plenty of other hikers on the trail. Couples, groups, families. Some of them were young and fit, others were older and reasonably fit, and some were obviously not in shape for a strenuous hike like this one. I don't know how often the NPS rangers have to rescue folks from the trails in Pinnacles NP, but doing so would not be an easy proposition.

An aside that doesn't have anything to do with Pinnacles National Park: I have done lots of hiking in national parks and other areas. You just never know what or who you are going to run into. I could fill many blog posts with examples of this phenomenon. A memorable example comes from the Chiricahua National Monument in southeasten Arizona and from years ago - I think it was January, but it is usually warm there even in January. I was hiking with my pre-teenage sons, going to the Heart of Rocks.

I always take a bunch of stuff with me when I hike - water, hat, sunscreen, food, knife, first-aid kit, emergency blanket, emergency poncho, etc. I have used this stuff often enough that I don't leave the vehicle without it. Anyways, we had been on the trail a couple of hours, and were a couple of miles from any trailhead, when we encountered a woman. She was fairly large, very blonde, very pale, wearing a baby-blue sundress, leather sandals, and nothing else (well, I hope underwear but I didn't look that closely). She had nothing with her - no water, no hat, nothing. It was like she had been transported there by aliens.

Big Basin Redwoods

Becky and I are in California – she for teaching, and me for hiking and exploring, which Becky is going to do as well, because we planned it that way. We are currently staying in Santa Cruz at Mission Inn. Our day trip today was to the Rancho del Oso area of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, which is a large mountainous area north of Santa Cruz, west of San Jose, and south of San Francisco. We did a pleasant half-day hike along Waddell Creek, then uphill along the Skyline to Sea trail, circling back to the trailhead.

Early during the hike we spotted a hairy woodpecker and a Steller’s jay. The Steller’s jays provided frequent accompaniment during our hike. We saw and heard both Common Ravens and American Crows.

The plant life was kind of a riot, in spite of the fact that central coastal California is in the midst of a catastrophic drought. There was quite a bit of invasive blackberry in some places, and many plants that I did not recognize. The wildflowers are just getting started under foot, and the deciduous trees haven’t leafed out yet. But the spectacular thing to see is, of course, the Redwoods.

It is hard to get good images of such large trees.

This is also a good place to observe manifestations of the life cycle of redwoods. There are a couple of places along the trail that we were hiking where there is a central depression that is the remains of the root cavity of a now-long-dead redwood, with a circle of large trees spaced irregularly around the central depression. The trees in the circle are root-sprouts of the now-long-dead individual, so are essentially clones of the mother tree. Because individual redwoods live 500 to 2000 years, the age of the “genetic individual” is certainly measured in millennia.

This area of Big Basin redwoods SP is also a good area to find both California newts

and Rough-skinned newts.

Newts are not very nimble in the terrestrial environment, so hikers, bikers, and equestrians are urged to watch out for them.

In spite of the “newt crossing” signs, there is still some mortality.

Along the Skyline to Sea trail, we spotted a couple of banana slugs

 

These were probably Ariolimax californicus, the California banana slug. There are two other species. There creatures are about 4 inches long, slow moving, and relatively common on the forest floor of the Pacific coast forests. They feed on detritus, animal feces, and mushrooms.

But the coolest thing that Becky found was a California red-sided garter snake, about half a meter long, basking in the sun beside the trail.

I am pretty sure this was the first time I have seen this species in the wild, so another vertebrate on my life list!