Wildlife Tracking in San Diego

Many tracks at Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve

For a few years now, I've been going out and around San Diego County, learning to read animal signs like footprints, scat, and rubs.  The amazing thing is that after three hours of looking at the ground for wildlife, we come home feeling satisfied with our conquests. What were they? Sets of deer track, deer poop, a coyote scat, woodrat scat, cottontail tracks, and one hind raccoon print. What do these things look like?  Below are a set of random photos from various sites to illustrate some of my sightings. And yes, once in a while you actually see the wildlife! Then you know those pellets really did come from rabbits.

Raccoon at Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve

Jack rabbit at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park,
behind the Visitor's Center

Wonderful Webmakers in the Garden

Here are a set of photos (above) shot on the same summer day (2008). A spider captured and bundled up a moth. The whole capture and carry procedure took a few minutes, and I considered myself fortunate to have gotten some good close-ups without a macro lense.


Later in the evening of the same day, I again lucked out in that I was able to capture this hardworking spider. This spider had great markings, but looked distinct from the ones above on the plants. I know little about spiders. Does anyone know if color and markings indicate another species of garden spider? How much phenotypic variation is there, and is it significant?

Reflections on Driving Alaska in Early Summer

In late June and early July, we drove around Alaska for 11 days, using Anchorage as our pivot point. Our itinerary was two nights in Anchorage, three nights in Healy (two days in Denali National Park), one night in Anchorage, three nights in Homer, one night in Anchorage (arriving on June 23, before flying back on July 3).

Anyone familiar with Alaskan distances knows that we must have spent about 24 hours in our rental car; in addition, we spent 14 hours on a shuttle bus getting into and out of Denali on two different days. Fortunately, we had three drivers for our long commutes to/from Anchorage. The Subaru from Avis was supposed to be an upgrade, but it was actually a bit cramped even though we only had one person over six feet. Luckily, we were able to get everything into the small luggage hold area since each of us had only one small suitcase and one backpack.

There was lots of looking, seeing, oo-ing and ah-ing. Next time(?!), however, I will make sure there's more tromping about as we did last year in Alberta's Canadian Rockies. Nevertheless, in our 11 days, we had so much good luck and beautiful weather, we even fantasized about living there (of course, we have no idea what it's like to spend half the year in darkness). Our B&B hostess in Homer explained that either first-timers love Alaska, or they hate it. As long as there are curtains in the bedrooms, I discovered I could fall asleep in the perpetual daylight of an Alaskan summer (22 hours).