Lichen On Black Walnut

A favorite walk of mine is to head west out the levee north of Putah Creek. The black walnut here was just off the levee on the other side of I-80, which at the time Sunday was filled with post-Christmas traffic moving very slowly westbound. There were no leaves at all on this walnut, nor any mistletoe, but many dark brown walnut husks were on the tree and on the ground.

Snowshoeing Alone

This morning I borrowed Martin’s new snowshoes to go for a little saunter through the woods (about half a block away) and to the lake. We had quite a bit of snow yesterday afternoon and overnight, and it was a fine powder covering a lot of ice—perfect snowshoeing conditions.

Although I used to live in New England, I lived in Cambridge, not in the country. I don’t know these trees now, if I ever did. I do remember the birds and their calls but there aren’t so many of those about—it’s probably below 0 degrees Fahrenheit as I write this—but the trees, if they aren’t birches, are outside my knowledge, especially the conifers. This part of Maine is mixed deciduous and conifer but if you go only a little further north it gets to be predominantly coniferous, so it’s on a border zone.

I feel like an outsider and a guest. I’m grateful to the woods for welcoming my novice attempts to get to know them this morning. Now, Dave, Beth: what on earth are these berries?

Postscript, December 30: the berries are a form of deciduous holly, ilex verticillata. They are also known as winterberry and black alder and as Beth notes, grow in close proximity to water. As Tattler notes, they are snatched by many for decorations, so I was glad to see them untouched in several places by the lakeside on my various walks.

Davis Depot

Yesterday I travelled by train from Davis to Berkeley to have brunch with my folks. There is an old Southern Pacific railroad depot at both ends of the journey. Sadly, the depot in Berkeley is presently sitting unused—its last role was as a restaurant, and it is currently slated to be the centerpiece of some new development. Traingoers at Berkeley simply get on and off at the side of the tracks underneath the overpass at the foot of University Avenue.

The depot in Davis is in active use as an Amtrak station, and the city has put a lot of effort into making the area around the station an attractive entrance to the town. The depot dates from 1913, at a time when Southern Pacific was building many Mission-style depots. At left is a sketch I did of the station while waiting for the train yesterday. The palms, another good Southern California touch, date from the 1920s.

Freezing Mists

Note to self: next time I need to ride my bike somewhere when it’s about 35 degrees F outside with dense fog do wear gloves. Next time means tomorrow morning—there’s a dense fog advisory in effect for the Sacramento Valley (“Conditions are expected to deteriorate through the night into Saturday morning. Locally temperatures are expected to be near freezing by morning”)

Pica meanwhile has headed off to Maine to visit her sister and family. Temperatures several degrees above freezing will seem in comparison to be balmy.

Black Walnuts In Winter

On this first day of winter I finished one journal and started the next. The campus bookstore stocks sketchbooks made by Pentalic which are wirebound and have 90 pound paper. I have no idea where else one can obtain these sketchbooks. The relatively heavy weight of the paper makes them great for taking washes, much better than the 70 pound paper usually found in this sort of bound sketchbook.

I went on a walk today to the Arboretum to test out the new journal. At right is a sketch of a line of black walnuts on the south edge of the Arboretum. Most of the green in the trees is actually mistletoe.

Christmas Bird Count

Tomorrow is the Putah Creek Christmas Bird Count. I’ll be joining about 40 other people scouring a circle which is about 15 miles in diameter, trying to count every single bird in our area.

Today was foggy all day, which doesn’t bode well for raptors or anything other than possibly waterfowl. Tonight we heard geese flying through the dark and the fog, honking to keep in radio contact. We’ll be taking our radios too…

Oil Spills Near the Solstice

The ship that is breaking up off Unalaska has my colleagues on alert; if a lot of oiled animals start coming in and they need a vet, somebody’s going to have to work over Christmas.

The problem is, there are only six hours of daylight. The spill seems not as bad as feared, and it’s possible they’ll blow up the ship and release the oil in a controlled manner, as long as they get good weather, which is in short supply in the Aleutians in winter, along with the light.

Long nights. Getting off work and it’s already dark. My brother and sister-in-law who live in Juneau get this darkness thing a lot worse than we do, yearn for the snow because at least it brightens up the long darkness.

The darkness, though, makes the light so much more welcome when it returns. I’m not sure I’d enjoy the tropics with sunset at six year-round. How then can you drink cocoa?

Written for the Ecotone’s Solstice Place.

Yagi at Rite-Aid

We were on crow duty today, meaning that after sunset we head to the University Mall at Russell and Anderson, turn on the radio, and see how many of the crows are in place roosting in the parking trees, endangering cars and passerbys below. Not that we needed it for checking at the mall, I played with the yagi for the first time. We parked across the street at Rite-Aid, since Pica had to run inside to pick up some stuff. A few observations: the yagi has lots of poky bits. Watch out for pedestrians before you do 360-degree twirlings. The mulched area between the sidewalk and the parking lot proved to be a good spot to turn around in. Second, don’t hold the antenna by the handle, but grasp it in the middle. Your wrist will be happier for it. Finally, be glad you don’t have to visually track down every crow (11 so far). That would take a while.

All crows were accounted for, including our friend 594, who was near our house this morning. But a couple weren’t at the mall, but were flying somewhere else. In particular Crow 113 was somewhere to the south. Since our route home took us that way we stopped about a third of a mile south and checked again. This time the strongest signal was to the west, towards the nearby dorms. We figured 113 was off on a balcony partaking of a keg or two.

Nature and Culture 180

We went this evening to the final presentation by the undergraduate class for Nature and Culture 180—each student had made an artist’s book following a week up at Sagehen in the Truckee River watershed in September. In this class they have written a scientific paper, done creative writing exercises, and made paper from lichens and other natural materials in addition to their final project, the book.

The resulting pieces were surprisingly varied in form. At left is Stacey McCulloch with her piece, Looking Through, featuring an aspen branch with knot-eye. The quality of the work was very high. I hope this means there will be more in the way of book arts in Davis…

Nature and Culture is actually an undergraduate major here. If I were considering college at this point in my life it’s something I’d definitely be interested in doing. No more useless than the degree I actually got (Spanish/French), and from what I can tell, a very great deal more fun.

More Crow Tracking

We now get to play wildlife biologist. The lassies who are tracking the crows at Pica’s work have an extra yagi antenna which we get to borrow. (A yagi is a directional antenna, looking something a TV aerial, that can be used for radio location purposes.) Previously when we hear the crows go beep——beep on our radio all we could do is say the crow is within a quarter-mile of where we are, but now we’ll be able to home in on him. Schlepping around the antenna we’ll look official, or is that suspicious, as well.

One sad note is the lassies relocated the transmitter for the only magpie they have caught so far: it was amidst a pile of feathers.