wild san francisco

Walter Kitundu bird talk, tonight!

2009-09-10T10:25:00.000-07:00

Walter Kitundu is a Multimedia Artist with the Exploratorium, Artist in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and a Distinguished Visiting professor of "Wood Arts" at the California College of the Arts. He is also a wildlife photographer, with a specialty in hawks and other raptors.

Wondering if you should go? Check out his website and wonder no more. These photos will be AMAZING on a big screen.

Randall Museum
199 Museum Way, San Francisco, CA 94114
7:30-9 pm.
Free and open to everyone.
For more information, go to www.sfns.org

coming home to roost

2009-08-25T10:54:00.001-07:00

Houston birdhouse, October 2008

Recently, I was directed to a lovely art piece in Brooklyn called for the birds, described as "Building birdhouses/roosting boxes so that are built-to-suit local bird species using cast off materials." Nice, right? So I was sad to look at the pictures and see that some of the houses had perches on the outside.

Please please please, if you are going to put up a birdhouse, please DON'T put a perch on the outside. As far as I know, there are no native birds that require a perch to get in or out of a nestbox. After all, if you didn't give them a box, they'd nest in a tree, or maybe your roof, and those don't have perches on them. The only purpose of a perch is to give birds that want to eat the wee birds inside a place to sit comfortably while they're dining. We've made life in the city hard enough for many of our native birds, and plenty easy for house sparrows and crows, don't sabotage your own good deed with an unnecessary perch.

End rant. Thanks.

summer in the city

2009-07-30T10:38:00.001-07:00

Oh San Francisco.....why do you have to do summer like you do?

"The Golden Gate is the only complete breach in the Coast Range, which borders the Paciﬁc for most of California’s length. As a result, the Bay Region is the meeting place of continental and oceanic air masses. Through the funnel of the Golden Gate and San Francisco Bay, the immense aerial forces of sea and land wage a continual war, and the tide of battle often ﬂows back and forth with regularity.

Along most of the Coast Range, the sea air and its fog reach the heads of the canyons and are stopped by the higher ridges from penetrating farther inland. But at the Golden Gate, the only sea-level breach in the mountains, the wind moves through the range, bringing with it the masses of condensed moisture. At the maximum, an estimated million tons of water an hour ﬂoat through the Gate as vapor and fog."

Geologic Map of California from the USGS, with the Coast Range shown in light green, and the break at the Gate in the black square

As grumpy as this summer fog can make me, I can't deny how amazing it is to stand in the Mission and watch the fog pour over Twin Peaks. It's the air and the atmosphere made visible in this incredible, tactile way. A million tons. That's amazing.

Get the short story on San Francisco Summer Fog from Bay Nature Magazine "Cutting Through the Fog: Demystifying the Summer Spectacle" (where the above quote came from) or the long story in this book from the same author.

"There's always a chance for new discoveries and surprises"*

2009-07-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

image of Smooth Owl's Clover from the Presidio Trust press release

1917 was the last time Smooth Owl’s Clover was last seen at the Presidio. That is, it was the last time it was seen until April 2009, when staff of the Presidio Trust spotted the bright yellow flower not seen in the Presidio in 92 years emerging from the soil.

from the SF Citizen:
Wildflowers Coming back to San Francisco’s Presidio – “Smooth Owl’s Clover” Rediscovered

*title quote also pulled from the Presidio Trust press release. A good motto, no?

water bears

2009-06-18T17:49:00.000-07:00

Have I ever told you about water bears?

If I haven't, I'm really sorry because water bears are amazing. Water Bears (aka Tardigrades = slow walkers ) are microscopic, water-dwelling, segmented animals with eight legs. The biggest adults can reach a body length of 1.5 mm, the smallest a wee 0.1 mm.

Water bears are considered "polyextremophiles", a fancy word that means that they are able to survive in conditions that humans and most other living things would find absolutely dreadful. Some can survive temperatures of -273°C (close to absolute zero), temperatures as high as 303 °F, 1,000 times more radiation than humans, almost a decade without water, and even the vacuum of space.

If you want to try your hand at bear-hunting, you may not have to leave the comfort of your own yard. To find some around your house, your best bet is to look somewhere that is intermittently or permanently damp. The most likely place in a backyard is in clumps of moss or lichen found in damper parts of yards such as the base of trees and walls, in plant pots, and on roofs or gutters.

Put the moss clumps they can be dry when collected in a small shallow dish and thoroughly wet with rainwater so that there's a centimeter of standing water in the dish. Let the moss stand in the water overnight, then remove the excess water from the dish and (this water can be discarded at this point). Use your hands to squeeze the moss clumps out to remove more water from the moss. Collect the squeezed water in a smaller dish or watch glass. Search this dish of water under a stereo microscope at 40x, or the lowest power of your compound microscope. Putting a black background behind your glass might help you see the specimens you've collected. You may need to look awhile in order to find water bears in your sample. Other critters, like worms and rotifers, are likely to be much more abundant. While I have a soft spot for these tiny bears, some of the other creatures are also quite amazing and incredible to watch.

When you're done searching, don't forget to put the moss clump and water back where you found it!

Tardigrade Appreciation Headquarters
Science Friday film about Water Bears

Moths of San Francisco

2009-06-10T11:48:00.000-07:00

Brought to you by the fine folks of the San Francisco Naturalist Society

"Come learn about the diversity of local moths and the biology of their caterpillars. San Francisco Naturalist Society general meeting. Free and open to everyone. Moth expert Dr. Jerry Powell received his B.S. (1955) and Ph.D. (1961) from UC Berkeley. He spent his long career at the University and he currently holds the titles of Professor of the Graduate School and Director Emeritus of the Essig Museum of Entomology."

Tomorrow! June 11, 2009

7:30 PM - 9:00 PM

Randall Museum

199 Museum Way

San Francisco, CA 94114

Swoops!

2009-06-05T16:38:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year, when the city is full of lots of hardworking bird parents protecting their carefully constructed nests and the precious cargo inside of them. Protecting your babies from threats can make any critter a little testy, and our feathered friends are no exception.

Have you heard about (or been attacked by) a brewer's blackbird at Front Street and California in downtown San Francisco. Then you may have had the distinctive pleasure of meeting "Swoops" guard-bird extraordinaire.

Check it out.

Like other legendary testy creatures in San Francisco, this creature has fans who chronicle it's every exploit in blog

You've been warned.

Official Dedication of the Tenderloin National Forest

2009-05-01T14:27:00.000-07:00

SATURDAY, MAY 9, 2009 - 10 AM TO 9PM

OFFICIAL DEDICATION OF

"THE TENDERLOIN NATIONAL FOREST"

An all day celebration of this wonderful space. DJ's, Butoh, Youth Speaks, Film/Video screenings and Arizmendi pizza.

Some history of the Tenderloin National Forest from the Luggage Store:

Luggage Store Co-Artistic Directors/Artists Darryl Smith and Laurie Lazer of the Luggage Store have been working to transform Cohen Alley since 1989 from a place emblazed in a health-hazardous cesspool of bodily fluids and other dumped items, non-supervised open-air chemical experiments and illicit – criminal activities -- to a community commons where people of all ages can gather for public art, performance, experimental art projects. and classes and activities related to this inner city garden which is home to naturally growing vegetation and built organic structures, or just to sit....

The Alley has been reclaimed and will be rededicated May 9, 2009 as “The Tenderloin National Forest." With recent funding from the San Francisco Art Commission/Creative Space Fund and the Mayor's Office, Community Challenge Grant, a series of physical improvements were completed.

One of the very few open spaces in our high density neighborhood of over 40,000 culturally and ethnically diverse residents, the Alley lies adjacent to two heavily trafficked inner city streets (Leavenworth running north and Ellis running est); and it is roughly 23 feet wide by 136 ft. deep. It is surrounded by multi story residential buildings and hotels that house formerly homeless, immigrant individuals and families, as well as seniors, artists, active drug users, dealers and others. The Tenderloin Children’s Playground is situated directly across the street.

In 2000, Lazer and Smith negotiated a lease with the City of San Francisco for $1.00 per year, which permanently closed the alley to traffic. A sculptured gate, commissioned by the luggage store and built and designed by Bay Area artist Kevin Leeper was installed.

Over the years, Lazer and Smith have organized murals to be painted on all sides of the Alley, produced and presented hundreds of performances and cultural events, planted trees, vegetables, herbs, flowers, built a small “ green” structure with a living roof, a staging area, seating, a clay oven, and upgraded lighting.

The Tenderloin National Forest is now dynamic, and is one of the most peaceful, quiet and inspirational areas in then neighborhood.

Green Hairstreak Butterfly Walk-May 9, 2009

2009-05-01T12:42:00.001-07:00

Image of Green Hairstreak Butterfly (Callophrys dumetorum) from natureinthecity.org

From the fine folks at Nature in the City-

"Come take a walk to see the Green Hairstreak butterflies and lend a hand in restoring habitat for this rare and beautiful creature! The Green Hairstreak Butterfly once flew in abundance throughout San Francisco, but now is restricted to Hawk Hill & Rocky Outcrop overlooking the Sunset District, and the coastal dunes of the Presidio. The goal of the Green Hairstreak Project is to connect the two small butterfly populations by planting a community corridor of local native plants. Restoring interbreeding between the two populations above the Sunset will bolster their genetic diversity and viability."

Space is limited -- RSVP by phone or email required.

Date: Saturday, May 9, 2009
Time: 11am-1pm
Location: Corner of 14th and Rivera, San Francisco
Cost: $10-50 suggested donation. No one turned away for lack of funds.
Contact/RSVP: 415-564-4107, steward@natureinthecity.org, http://www.natureinthecity.org/.

Chill Pill

2009-04-01T19:54:00.000-07:00

Pilllbugs (Armadillidium vulgare aka roly poly) are crustaceans, related to shrimp, crabs and lobsters. Their family name is Armadillidiidae, which refers to their Armadillo-like defensive posture of curling up into a tight ball. A related family, the Porcellionidae, look like pillbugs but lack the ability to roll up when threatened.

These charming little creatures are one of the few crustaceans that have made the long trip from the sea on to land.

(far from the sea)

Pillbugs need moisture because they breathe through gills, which is why they are usually found in dark, damp places, like underneath rocks and logs. Most are nocturnal detritivores, emerging at night to feed on dead plant matter.

Pillbugs, like other crustaceans, have an exoskeleton which they have to shed as they grow. Moulting takes place in two stages; the back half is lost first, followed two or three days later by the front.

If you flip a pillbug over (and it doesn't curl up on you), you can distinguish between males and females by the shape of their legs. Females will have leaf-like growths, brood pouches to hold developing eggs and embryos, at base of a few of their legs. Up to 100 eggs at a time can be held in the brood pouch. After the eggs hatch, the juveniles, which look like miniature adults are soon freed and receive no more parental care.

come to the park!

2009-03-30T13:19:00.001-07:00

butterflies are migrating!

ps-they are painted ladies

fort funston

2009-03-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

It's low tide time again this weekend. My love affair with low tides started when I was a tiny person and got to spend hours on the rocky beaches in Seattle, peering under rocks for all the amazingness that lurked underneath (thanks Mom!). To this day one of my favorite places in the entire world is on the beach at a low tide.

So one of the things that has always bummed me out about San Francisco was its lack of rocky shores for exploring. There are truly amazing beaches just north and south of the city but they are, sadly, rather difficult to reach by public transport. (I will say in San Francisco's defense that the only octopus that I have ever seen at a low tide anywhere was in the rock wall off Marina Green. That was great.)

The ocean was calling my name last month at low tide, so I headed out to Fort Funston by way of a long walk down Ocean Beach. And honestly, it was lovely. The sandstone cliffs are beautiful, composed of soft soft rocks from the Merced and Colma Formations. The Merced Formation makes up most of the cliff face and the Colma Formation is the thin sandy layer at the top. The Merced was deposited from about 2 or 3 million years ago to about half a million years ago and the Colma, about 125,000 to 55,000 years ago. In some sections of the cliff face you can see a thick, chalky substance-veins of volcanic ash thrown from Mount Lassen thousands of years ago!

At the base of the cliffs is this thick black sand. I thought this was the sad remnants of the Cosco Busan spill but it turns out that it's a kind of iron ore called magnetite. The magnetite is a part of the cliff walls, and as the sandstone erodes, it leaves the heavier iron-based magnetite on the beach.

So I was relieved that the black stuff wasn't oil. But oh man, was there a lot of other garbage at the high tide line. From a distance I thought this junk was shells....it was sad to get up close and realize it was all plastic and styrofoam.

Ah....but there were shells lower on the beach.

Western Sand Dollar

(Dendraster excentricus)

These lovely critters form dense beds in the low intertidal and subtidal zone in the sand just beyond the break zone of coastal areas. Their living body consists of a rigid test (a hard external covering) covered with movable spines, usually a pale gray-lavender to a dark purplish black. The lovely flower-like pattern on the aboral side of the body is composed of pore pairs whose specialized tube feet are used for gas exchange. At the center is the madreporite - a perforated structure that forms the intake for their water-vascular system-a system of water-filled canals that connect with tube feet, which the animal use for locomotion, feeding and breathing. It's fun to stare at the ocean and imagine all the life out there just underneath the surface.

San Bruno Mountain

2009-03-04T20:06:00.000-08:00

You know how you can live near a restaurant and walk by it every day and then one day, after years of walking by, realize they serve the kind of food that you absolutely LOVE......and you go and it's great, leaving you wondering why on earth you never went there before?

Last weekend B and I went to San Bruno mountain. For the first time. Which is totally ridiculous because it's truly lovely there. We saw....

Moss and Lichen (loving the rain)

A huge ant colony. I read later that there are 27 native ant species on San Bruno Mountain. What kind of ants are these?

Fritillaria affinis (aka Mission Bells or Chocolate Lily)

My number one terrestrial mollusc!

Ariolimax columbianus (aka the mighty Banana Slug )

up in the sky!

2009-03-01T11:41:00.000-08:00

Where would you go if you wanted to see one of the fastest predators on earth?
Would you believe me if I told you that right now you have a good chance of finding one at Main and Beale in downtown San Francisco?

No, cheetahs aren't hanging in the Financial District, but a couple of Perigrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) are. How do you know if you're looking at a peregrine? They are crow-sized falcon, with a blue-gray back, barred white underparts, and a black head and "moustache". These birds can be found all over the world, hence the name, which means "wandering falcon" (a fancy word for wandering around on foot is "peregrination").

The Peregrine Falcon became an endangered species due to the use of pesticides, especially DDT. Since the ban on DDT in the 1970s, the many populations have recovered, supported protection of nesting places and releases to the wild. Interestingly, lots peregrines have settled in cities, with tall buildings that stand in for cliff faces and a plentiful supply of food (especially pigeons). They search for prey either from a high perch or from the air. Once prey is spotted, it begins its stoop, a dive in which they can reach speeds of 200 mph. Peregrines strike their prey with a clenched foot, which stuns or kills it, then turn to catch it mid-air. I saw a peregrine catch a pigeon on Mission and 3rd-it's a truly impressive display.

The fine folks at the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Group have been instrumental in the recovery of peregrines in California. As part of their education and outreach they have installed cameras in San Francisco and San Jose to allow the public to peer into the lives of these amazing birds. There has been much drama with the San Francisco birds with the much loved Gracie and George abandoning downtown for the Bay Bridge and then vanishing altogether from the city. This year there are two new birds on the nest cam.-now is a great time to start watching. Peregrines mate for life and go through some really charming courting in the lead up to mating. Sadly (or luckily for my productivity) I can't stream video at work, but if you can, you should check it out.

If you want to see some truly remarkable images of these (and other) birds, check out the website of Glenn Nevill. Or, if you want to try to catch one in person, try some of the spots on this map.

Happy perigrinations!

2009-02-24T17:28:00.000-08:00

Photography is one of the many things I wish I could do better. However, I suspect that what I need is not just more patience, skill and practice, but also some fancy, and maybe expensive, equipment.

While I work on those things, I'll direct you to the fabulous San Francisco Citizen, who posts regularly about all kinds of SF related stuff, including some truly fabulous pictures. Lately they've covered foxes, damselflies and some pretty graphic bird poops.

Please, pay them a visit.

a miner forest

2009-02-18T10:30:00.000-08:00

Miner's lettuce

(Claytonia perfoliata)

Native to the western mountain and coastal regions of North America, Miner's lettuce is found from Alaska to Central America. It's common in the spring, and prefers cool, damp conditions., often appearing in sunlit areas after the first heavy rains. As days get hotter and the leaves dry out, they turn from green to a deep red color.

The common name "Miner's lettuce" refers the plant's use by California gold rush miners who ate it to get their vitamin C to prevent scurvy. People still eat miner's lettuce as a leaf vegetable, most commonly raw in salads, sometimes boiled like spinach.

Birding at the End of Nature

2009-02-02T13:21:00.000-08:00

The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature"

Locations: Main Library Koret Auditorium
Address: 100 Larkin St. (at Grove)
Library Sponsored Public Program

Event Time: 6 p.m. - 7:30 p.m., Tuesday February 3
Author Jonathan Rosen discusses his book, "The Life of the Skies". Copies of the book will be available to purchase for the author to sign. Cosponsored by the Stegner Environmental Center.

Twelve years ago, at age 30, Rosen (Joy Comes in the Morning, 2004, etc.) took a class in bird-watching and found a new way of seeing. Through the "sanctioned voyeurism" of his new passion, he began noticing everything in Central Park, just two blocks from his Manhattan apartment: the birds, to be sure, but also connections between humans and the wild, the pleasure of lists and classifications, his own unexpected hungers and urges. In these pages Rosen mingles accounts of his own experiences in the field with those of others from Henry David Thoreau and Alfred Russel Wallace to the Yiddish journalist Abraham Cahan to convey the lure of a pastime pursued by 47.8 million Americans. Bird-watching, he declares, is "simultaneously marginal and utterly central to the business of being human." Looking at the feathered creatures that are the dinosaurs' closest living relatives satisfies his craving for wildness and makes him feel whole. Rosen's text covers wide ground. Interesting facts include the bleak statistic that half of all migrating birds die on the journey. Among the famous birders profiled are John James Audubon, who killed and impaled hundreds of birds in order to resurrect them in paintings, and President Theodore Roosevelt, who burst into a cabinet meeting declaring he had just seen a chestnut-sided warbler. The author recounts pursuits of rare birds, from Wallace's search for the bird of paradise to his own unsuccessful quest to spot the ivory-billed woodpecker in the Big Woods of Arkansas. Readers will close the book understanding the magic he feels at his favorite spring in Central Park during the day's last hour of light, when birds come to drink.Combining memoir, history and science, Rosen's gracefully written chapters form an exquisitely crafted meditation on life and nature, as well as a splendid introduction to bird-watching.

( Kirkus Reviews 2007 November #2)

Coast! Live! Oak!

2009-01-19T16:24:00.001-08:00

My first tree of 2009 is the Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia). Of all the trees in Golden Gate Park, this is the only species that is native there....and there's a whole lot of them. It's fun to learn a tree you see a lot, because everytime you walk by one you can say "coast live oak" (say it out loud and give it a wave).

How do you know if you're looking at a Coast Live Oak? Their height is pretty variable, from 25 to 40 feet, so height could throw you off. To be sure, check out their characteristic leaves.

Coast Live Oaks have round to oval shaped, brittle leaves, generally with several spine-tipped teeth. Look for tufts of hairs on the bottom of the leaves.

bats in the ggp!

2009-01-12T20:16:00.000-08:00

Holy cow it was nice outside today.

Walking home from work today, not far out of the building, between the tennis courts and the AIDS memorial grove about a dozen bats zoomed around my head. So rad.

What kind of bats were they?

Turns out there are 23 bat species native to California, 14 in the Bay Area. It was dark, they were fast and I don't know a thing about bats, so I won't even attempt to ID them.

In doing some google sleuthing I found out that the USGS has been doing bat surveys in the Bay Area, and has a great website that has all kinds of bat vocalizations. Check it out.

USGS bat inventories in the San Francisco Bay Area

First rock of 2009-Serpentinite

2009-01-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

South side of the Mint (Safeway parking lot)

In addition to wanting to learn more about trees this year, I also want to learn more about rocks. Luckily, I can use kind of a similar approach to both subjects. Neither trees nor rocks go anywhere very fast, so I can use our vast collection of field guides to look stuff up post-wandering, and if I can't figure out what something is, I can go back and take another look (and maybe bring a camera).

Alright. First rock of the year is serpentinite, a hulking mass of which holds up the mighty Mint at Market and Dolores. It's a metamorphic rock found on the sea floor at tectonic boundaries. Serpentinite often contains veins, some of which may be filled with a form of asbestos called chrysotile.

Pay attention to serpentinite – if you see fibrous veins, don’t touch the rock.

I didn't see any fibrous veins in this rock, but I also didn't get that close. Not surprisingly, they have a big old fence around the Mint. And very stern looking guys with guns. They may even have guard crows. I kid you not, as I was walking around the building trying to find a place to take a picture a crow flew over me and dropped a rock square on the top of my head.

Little bit of trivia? It's the California state rock.

More trivia? This hill used to be 90 feet high, but they shaved off the top 40 feet to build the Mint. Our very own mountaintop removal project.

Irreplaceable Wildlife in San Francisco Bay

2008-12-15T13:54:00.001-08:00

My advisor just forwarded me an announcement for an event tomorrow evening....

Climate Change and San Francisco Bay Area Wildlife

San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin St. at Grove
San Francisco, CA 94102
Civic Center near Market St
Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room

Tuesday, December 16, 6 PM

Have you ever wondered what the San Francisco Bay area would look like with rising sea levels, drought, vegetation changes, wildlife migration and other impacts of global warming? How will we and the wildlife we share this beautiful area with adapt and survive?

Climate change has emerged as one of the most pressing challenges facing the world today. Scientists predict that global warming will become a leading cause of species extinction over the next several decades. Addressing these
challenges is vital to many species' future.

Please join us for an inspiring and informational evening with leading scientists to discuss our local threatened wildlife and climate change. Find out what you can do to help save the diversity of life from climate change.

Speakers:
Dr. Peter Roopnarine, Curator, Dept. of Zoology, California Academy of Sciences
Tamara Williams, Physical Scientist, Golden Gate National Recreation Area
Superintendent Maria Brown, Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary
Zeke Grader, Executive Director, Institute for Fisheries Resources
Mike Lynes, Conservation Director, Golden Gate Audubon

www.irreplaceablewild.org

Ecology of San Francisco Bike Tour

2008-12-12T11:22:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow!

Bike Tour: Ecological History (South)

Sat. Dec 13, noon, $15-50, benefitting Shaping San Francisco

This trip through San Francisco's lost sand dunes, ponds, creeks and coastline will focus on the city south of downtown and SOMA, traversing the Mission, Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, Bayview, and the southeast coastline, including several new public parks. It's a social, historical and critical 4-hour tour through the city's ecological past and present.

Res/Info: 415.608.9035

Fungus Fair!

2008-12-02T12:49:00.000-08:00

mushrooms in Golden Gate Park

It's finally raining here (well, not today, but the rainy season has started...) and that means it's time for the annual Fungus Fair hosted by the the Oakland Museum and the San Francisco Mycological Society.

___________________________________________

A Celebration of Wild Mushrooms

December 6-7 2008
Saturday: 10 am to 6 pm — Sunday: 12 pm to 5 pm
Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Streets, Oakland

In the San Francisco Bay Area, when the first rains tease up the chanterelles and porcini, fungus lovers head to the Fungus Fair: A Celebration of Wild Mushrooms at the Oakland Museum of California. The Fair, hosted by the museum and the Mycological Society of San Francisco, provides information on the uses and abuses of fungi, with displays and exhibits on ecology, toxicology, and cultivation. Arrays of identification tables display locally collected mushrooms. Campsite gourmands learn how to serve up the safe and scrumptious species through identification tutorials, cooking demonstrations, and sales of recipe books, soups, snacks, and fresh edibles.
____________________________________________________________________________________

Mushroom nerds are some of the funnest nerds you will ever meet.

spider man

2008-11-14T10:43:00.001-08:00

Last night as I was walking past the synagogue at 16th and Dolores and saw a man walking toward me do a double-take, then start staring intently at the tiny ivy shrub in the planter box.
As I walked behind him, he said "Hey lady, check out this spider...."

"...that could really mess you up."

I didn't say this then, but I'll say it now. Thanks spider man, for sharing your spider find with me. You made my day.

ice age bay area

2008-11-13T11:47:00.000-08:00

My thesis is wringing out my brain like a wet towel this week. Since I have fossils on the brain all the time these days, I thought I'd pass along this awesome video from KQED's Quest program.

I would give a million dollars to see a giant sloth. (Did you know they found the skeleton of one when they were excavating the Berkeley BART station? I think about that sloth everytime I'm there.)

the marsh imagination project

2008-11-06T17:19:00.000-08:00

from my inbox.....

We are an organization devoted to the creation of a public dialogue about the meaning which the salt marshes of the San Francisco Bay have to the citizens of the bay area and visions for the future of the San Francisco Bay marsh ecosystem. In doing this, we are very interested in receiving input from all segments of the region's community, including the birding community. We are asking for submissions of photos, comments, writing and other forms of expression to be sent to marshimaginationproject@gmail.com. These may include bird-related and non bird-related materials and we ask that you tell us how you would like to be credited and whether you would prefer to remain anonymous. All submissions will then be posted to our website. After we have received a large number of submissions, we will compile them and create a physical display of them in a public place.

Thank you,

The Marsh Imagination Project
http://marshimaginationproject.blogspot.com

Share your marsh love.

this is not a blog about birds

2008-10-25T16:56:00.001-07:00

But I've gotta say, holy cow, have you been watching the crows flying around these days?

Crows are all over the city right now. Just look up and I can almost guarantee that you'll see one, maybe a whole bunch. Watching them pitch and roll and play with each other never fails to lift my heart.

I know that corvids are complicated birds to love, on one hand, they're incredibly smart (and always remember a face), on the other, their increased numbers are often correlated with declines in other birds (see Rebecca Solnit's excellent essay "A Murder of Crows: On Globalized Species" for more on this).

street trees!

2008-10-23T12:14:00.001-07:00

For a long time now I've had "learn street trees" on my list of things to do. When I first moved to the city I was obsessed with street trees. The Mission was the densest, most urban neighborhood I had ever lived in and it freaked me out-there was way too many people and way too much concrete-so focusing on street trees was a way out, a place for me to redirect my attention to something that was beautiful and quiet and alive in a city that often bowled me over.

While street trees are what set me off on this path of trying to notice nature in the city, my progress on learning their names has been dismal. Previously, I'd toyed with the idea of making signs with their names, or just writing their names on the ground next to the tree as a way to learn some names, like when you label everything in your house to learn what it's called in spanish. That project has languished, but may be resuscitated thanks to the totally awesome San Francisco Urban Forest Mapping Project. What is this cool project you say?

From their website:

In the past, San Francisco's long-term urban forest planning was hindered because there was no way to share information, much less get the community involved. That's all changed, thanks to a significant partnership effort between Friends of the Urban Forest, the City and County of San Francisco, and Autodesk. By working together and leveraging new technology – MapGuide Open Source – the project team has created an Urban Forest Map, which digitally pinpoints the location of each tree, maintains tree data in a consistent database, and offers web access to the tree data – key for maintenance and planting efforts. The community can get involved by posting photos and stories about their own trees that they plant and map online.

Heck yeah! Look up the tree outside your house! Not there? Find out what it is and add it to the map!

This is our street tree, a flowering cherry (Prunus serrulata 'Kwanzan'). This picture isn't very impressive, but in the spring, this tree has the most incredible pink puffball flowers.

Want to learn more about street trees? You can find tree descriptions and a calendar of San Francisco tree related activities (including tree tours and tree plantings) at Friends of the Urban Forest.

Why I don't listen to an ipod when I walk...

2008-08-22T22:37:00.000-07:00

...because I wouldn't have heard these birds screeching on my way into work this morning.

One fierce red-tailed hawk fighting off two others just off Page and Steiner. Did you see it?

panhandle lichen

2008-07-29T20:47:00.000-07:00

Lichen is awesome.

Lichen (pictured above) is actually two organisms living in a symbiotic relationship. Fungus makes the body we can see and bears the name of the lichen, while the microscopic algal partner lives in the tissue of its fungal host. Fungi can't photosynthesize (they seem plant-like but are actually in an entirely different kingdom and are more closely related to you than plants are), they're heterotrophs that decompose organic matter to eat. The alga uses its host for the capture of water and minerals. The fungus benefits from the alga's ability to photosynthesize. The algal and fungal partners of some lichen have been separated and cultured in the lab, but out in the world, both rely on each other to grow and reproduce.

Lichen can survive in some pretty harsh natural conditions (many can enter a state of cryptobiosis-a sort of suspended animation-in response to dessication) but some are incredibly sensitive to man-made pollutants, and are widely used as pollution indicators.

Presidio Bee Walk

2008-07-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

Did you know that there are over 60 species of bees living in the Presidio? Come meet some of your lovely native neighbors this Sunday with Dr. John Hafernik, entomologist extrordinare, from San Francisco State University. We have some truly beautiful native bees here in San Francisco-I would encourage everyone to make their acquaintance.

Scarlet Pimpernel

2008-07-18T12:49:00.000-07:00

Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis)

Also known as "the Poor Man's Weatherglass" because the flowers only open when the sun shines (though you could probably tell when the sun was shining just by looking at the sky and not the ground). They'll close when it's getting dark, or when the barometric pressure is dropping, indicating a coming storm.
This plant is originally from Europe, but is pretty common in San Francisco. I guess it's considered a weed by lots of folks. I think it's lovely.

you are your own wilderness

2008-07-07T13:25:00.000-07:00

You don't even have to get up to find wildness. Yes you, sitting there in front of your computer screen, are your own amazingly diverse ecosystem. The going estimate is that 500 to 100,000 species of bacteria can be found on the human body. The total number of microbial cells found on your body may exceed the number of your own personal cells by a factor of ten-to-one. That means if someone broke you down into a big old pile of cells only 10% of that pile would be you!

The diversity on your body is truly amazing-and vastly underappreciated. A recent study looking at the microbial diversity on human forearms (the part of your arm between your wrist and elbow) found 182 species, 14 of which had never been described. A normal human gut has at least at least 500 bacterial species, probably more. While your personal flora can make your armpits smelly, they are also the critters to thank for your ability to synthesize vitamin K and digest carbohydrates.

People are so freaky now about using crazy antibacterial, kill-everything soaps and sprays, which may help get rid of some of the cooties we're trying to avoid (at least in the short term, though it's also producing some gnarly super-bugs too), but we're also killing parts of the complex ecosystems that are our bodies before we have any idea what's there or what it does. Next time you eat a piece of bread, or get a little stinky after some hard work, give a little thank you to the marvelous critters of your body and the wondrous diversity that is you.

Human Microbiome Project at the NIH
Human Microbiome Project article in Nature

Who are the creatures in your neighborhood?

2008-06-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

Ok. The idea when I started blog this was to be informal, not so science-nerdy (since that's what I am in the rest of my life), so this post may just be a temporary departure, or may reflect a different idea of what this is for.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about science as a public service. If you pay taxes, you pay for me to do the work that I do (I'm funded by the NSF) and, as far as I'm concerned, that means that I not only have a responsibility to do good work, but I have a responsibility to communicate what I and my colleagues are learning.

One of the subjects that has come up quite a bit in my lab has been how plant and animal communities respond when their environment starts changing. Since I work in a paleontology lab most of my work focuses on how communities in the past have changed-but my greatest hope is that this work will provide us with some clues into how communities that exist today may change. One thing that seems clear from the fossil record is that not all members of a community will change in the same way at the same time.

Recently a paper came out in PLoS ONE examining what may happen to the plant communities in California as our climate changes.

Loarie, Scott R., Benjamin E. Carter, Katharine Hayhoe, Sean McMahon, Richard Moe, Charles A. Knight and David D. Ackerly (2008). Climate Change and the Future of California's Endemic Flora. PLoS ONE 3(6):e2502. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002502

The flora of California, a global biodiversity hotspot, includes 2387 endemic plant taxa. With anticipated climate change, we project that up to 66% will experience >80% reductions in range size within a century. These results are comparable with other studies of fewer species or just samples of a region's endemics. Projected reductions depend on the magnitude of future emissions and on the ability of species to disperse from their current locations. California's varied terrain could cause species to move in very different directions, breaking up present-day floras. However, our projections also identify regions where species undergoing severe range reductions may persist. Protecting these potential future refugia and facilitating species dispersal will be essential to maintain biodiversity in the face of climate change.

Endemic species are species that aren't found anywhere else. California has A LOT of endemic plant species, enough that it has been labeled a "biodiversity hotspot". The concern that biologists have about these endemic ecological communities that don't have a very big range is that, as our climate changes over the coming years these communities could disassemble, with some members moving faster, or in different directions than others. That's what these folks are talking about when they say "breaking up present-day floras". The result could be communities that look and behave very different than what we have today. The fancy phrase for these new groups of plants and animals is "non-analogous communities".

To which you might say, cool, we'll get the plants from Southern California and our plants will just move on up to Mendicino. We'll visit on weekends and holidays. Sounds good, except we've managed to put a lot of obstacles in the way of species. Roads, cities and farms are just a few of the things that may prevent species from following their optimal environment as the world around them changes. So, while at the end of the last ice age species could follow a retreating glacier, now it's not so easy, and may in fact put many more species at risk for extinction than there would be if they could move unimpeded.

This article made the front page of the website of our local newspaper and I was aghast at some of the comments that were left. Granted, there are always the same folks who pipe up and make some inane comment about Al Gore's weight or warming on Mars every time there's an article about climate change, but there were also people who seemed genuinely confused about the science of climate change and extinction. Part of the problem is that these are two really complicated issues that are interacting in complex ways. Even if our climate was not changing, we would still be losing species. We're losing species from overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction and on and on. Yes, species have always gone extinct, but we are disassembling ecological communities at an alarming rate-and the consequences of our actions could be severe. Regardless of how you feel about the inherent right of other species to exist on this planet (and I strongly believe that), the risks to humans alone are enormous. I'm not the first person to say this, but I think it's true, so I'll repeat it here. Human destruction of ecosystems is a huge, uncontrolled experiment, the consequences of which we are not yet able to predict, but which, by the time some of the effects become apparent, may to too late for us to change some of our choices. I'm not hopeless about the situation we are in, but I think we need to do some serious considering of what kind of world we want, and what kinds of choices we need to make right now in order to make that world a reality.

Read the entire article here.
(yay to the Public Library of Science!)

lunchtime in golden gate park

2008-06-11T21:08:00.000-07:00

I had leftover tabbouleh. She chose the gopher.

I love working in the park.

what's your story?

2008-06-02T11:28:00.000-07:00

Hey. It's been awhile I know. Soon I'll be back in the saddle, with all new intentions of posting more regularly.

Until then, do you have any good stories about animals in San Francisco? The folks at SFMOMA are looking for some to include in a booklet for Fritz Haeg's ANIMAL ESTATES project coming there this summer. The deadline is, um.......today, so write quickly. Last time I looked they only had one submission.

Entries can be posted on the SFMOMA blog.

I'll write more soon.

The Tenderloin National Forest

2008-04-22T16:48:00.000-07:00

From their website:

The Tenderloin National Forest was created to address the lack of green space in this neighborhood.
The Forest is intended to be an inspiration and model for others to attempt gardening in the inner city. People are welcome to come by the Forest to look, and if the gate is open (when the gardeners are there), to see the plants and exchange ideas about forests and flora in the city.

Brainless but not clueless

2008-04-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

photo of Eisenia foetida from our worm bin

Ah! The all hail the lowly earthworm! You may already know that they're master composters, but did you know that they also have some remarkable abilities in the sack (so to speak)? Red worms, like many other worms, are simultaneous hermaphrodites, which means that they have functional male and female reproductive organs at the same time. The sperm recipient also has the ability to store sperm. Sperm storing is remarkably common in the animal kingdom, and has led to some amazing innovations in sperm sorting (on the ladies' end) and sperm removal (on the male's end).

The May 7, 2008 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B has a paper by Alberto Velando et al. addressing this very issue in Eisenia andrei, a close relative of the red wiggler in your compost bin. Check it out:

Brainless but not clueless: earthworms boost their ejaculates when they detect fecund non-virgin partners.

From their abstract:
we performed a double-mating experiment to determine whether earthworms (Eisenia andrei) detect the mating status of their partners and whether they respond by adjusting their ejaculate. We found that earthworms triplicated the donated sperm when mating with a non-virgin mate. Moreover, such increases were greater when the worms were mated with larger (more fecund) partners, indicating that earthworms perform a fine tune control of ejaculate volume.

Way to go guys! Brainless but not clueless indeed.

Wish You Were Here

2008-04-01T12:47:00.000-07:00

"Monarch", the last known California Grizzly Bear, now in the collections at the California Academy of Sciences

I live in a place that used to have large wild animals, all of us do. Much of the way that we live is profoundly and unnecessarily destructive of the rest of the life around us. In that vein, I've been thinking a lot about re-wilding. The idea of wilding, of wildness, makes me all shivery. I want to say bring it back, bring it all back, whatever we can restore, it's our responsibility to restore it, to try to make all of the wrong we've done if not right, then at least a little less wrong. But for re-wilding to be real, for it to work, we, and I mean we as all of us, need to be willing to have some hard conversations about humanity and land and nature and where we want to be.

Lately there's been a flurry of stories about the removal of the Northern Rockies grey wolf from the endangered species list. A recent article from the BBC discussed plans to reintroduce beavers, wildcats and wolves to Britain. It's a really well-written (though short) article that summarizes a lot of the unease that people have about rewilding urban or suburban areas. Beavers have moved in to both downtown Martinez and the Bronx river in recent years. So, they can live in cities. But what happens when they do? Beavers are, by their nature, ecosystem engineers. Unfortunately, so are we and our plans may be at odds with theirs.

What does it mean to bring animals back? Especially when they haven't just wandered back on their own, but came back specifically because we brought them or explicitly laid out the welcome mat? What is our responsibility to them once they have returned? If we bring back beavers do we need to move our homes to accommodate the wetlands that their dams create? If we bring back salamanders do we need to commit to stopping the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides? Can we welcome raptors back to our cities while simultaneously poisoning their food? What if the nature that we welcome back doesn't play by our rules? What if it nests on the beaches where we like to walk our dogs or spawns near the pumps where we get our drinking water?

There's an artist named Fritz Haeg who's doing what sounds like a fascinating project called Animal Estates addressing this very issue. He just set up his first public estate in New York as part of the Whitney Biennial and will be setting up some creature homes in San Francisco this summer. I'll be interested to see what kinds of conversations his installations provoke.

It's Spring!

2008-03-12T10:42:00.000-07:00

Yay! While the season may wreak havoc on your sinuses it's a good chance to head outside and learn some local plants, and maybe help some science nerds in the process.

Project BudBurst is a national field campaign designed to engage the public in the collection of important data on the timing of leafing and flowering of trees and other plants. BudBurst participants collect and submit observations of events such as the first bud burst, first leafing, first flower, and seed or fruit dispersal of trees and other plants, including weeds and ornamentals. The idea is that scientists can then use this data to learn about the responses of plant species to climatic variation locally, regionally, and nationally, and to detect longer-term impacts of climate change by comparing with historical data.

Lunar eclipse

2008-02-20T12:07:00.000-08:00

(photo of 2007 lunar eclipse in Australia from Peter Campbell via Wikipedia)

There's a total lunar eclipse tonight! The awesome folks from the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers are going to be hanging out at the Randall Museum tonight to watch the event and chat about all things lunar.

From their website:

Partial eclipse begins at sundown - telescopes available to public.
Total eclipse begins at 7:00 pm
Total eclipse ends at 7:51 pm
Public lecture on "Moonology" at 8:00 pm
Partial eclipse ends at 9:09 pm

Bad weather cancels the viewing, but the lecture (inside) will go on regardless of conditions outside.

Starlings in Winter

2008-02-13T16:17:00.000-08:00

(Sturnus vulgaris photo from Wikimedia commons)

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly
they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,
dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,
then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine
how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

Mary Oliver

(That's all for me today.)

Ants!

2008-02-08T09:16:00.000-08:00

So, we've had some ants in our house lately. I find ants fascinating little creatures, but I'm not so jazzed about them showing up in my kitchen. In an attempt to make lemonade out of these little lemons on my counter, I've been doing some reading about ants in the bay area.

A few years ago, the California Academy of Sciences started the Bay Area Ant Survey to try to figure out the diversity of ants in the San Francisco bay area. They enlisted the public, asking folks to collect ants and send them in to be identified. If you go to their website, you can look up your part of the bay and see what's there. So far, the project has identified more than 100 ant species. Wow!

The ants in my kitchen are most likely Argentine ants (Linepithema humile). These ants are native to northern Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and southern Brazil, and have probably been introduced to the United States multiple times. These ants come inside when it's hot looking for water and when it's wet to get out of the rain. Argentine ants live in colonies, like honeybees and termites, with non-reproductive female workers serving reproductive queens. Unlike honeybees, Argentine ant colonies have multiple queens at the same time (which also makes the colonies hard to get rid of once they've moved in).

There is an ongoing debate among ant researchers about the existence on Argentine ant supercolonies. In 2000, the Tsutsui lab at University of California-San Diego published a paper suggesting that California Argentine ants are less genetically diverse than populations in their native Argentina, and used this evidence to explain the lack of aggression between California populations. The Gordon lab at Stanford has refuted the supercolony idea, suggesting that there are indeed breaks in this colony and that these breaks are evident in the genes of different populations if you look at the right genes. As an aside, I saw Deborah Gordon speak at an Ask the Scientist event a few years ago and she was fantastic. She's a super-engaging speaker who's honestly thrilled by her organism and wants to teach other people about it. If you get a chance to hear her talk I'd highly recommend going.

Gordon Lab at Stanford
Tsutsui Lab at Berkeley

How do Hummingbirds Chirp?

2008-01-31T08:49:00.001-08:00

Hummingbird at Howard and South Van Ness

I just read an article on the BBC summarizing a paper that describes how male Anna's Hummingbirds (Calypte anna) chirp. For those not familiar with these birds and their behavior, during mating season (around now if you're in San Francisco), the males fly high up in the air then dive down towards their female, reaching speeds of 50 mph. During this dive, the males produce a distinctive chirp. But how? Turns out the chirp is not a vocalization but is a mechanical sound produced by their tail feathers. Neat! The article has some beautiful photos of these birds and links to some great videos of hummingbirds.

If you want to see an Anna's hummingbird for yourself, now's a good time. They're the only hummingbird that's common in Northern California in the winter, and are comfortable nesting in cities and gardens. The males are incredibly distinctive, with both their head and neck covered in rosy-red feathers. Keep an eye out. They're cool little creatures.

San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival

2008-01-28T12:32:00.000-08:00

Celebrate the migration of more than one million shorebirds and hundreds of thousands of ducks and geese, hawks and butterflies through the San Francisco Bay Estuary.
There are more than 70 events from February 1st to the 10th, from guided walks to kids art workshops. The schedule (and all kinds of other information) is here.

Wild in my kitchen

2008-01-16T15:37:00.001-08:00

The boiler was broken at work this week, so I took the opportunity to work at home on Tuesday. And working at home means getting to do fun little projects to break up the computer time.

Tuesday's fun project was making my first batch of sauerkraut in 2008. WooHoo!

This is one of the two heads of cabbage that are now fermenting away on the top of our fridge. (Check the lovely crock in the background. Blair found it for me Christmas. No more big plastic tub for me!) Cabbage and salt go in and then the wild bacteria do their thing to make it into sour goodness. I have to say, I understand bacteria and culturing and all of that business, but fermented food still seem a bit magical to me. I love the idea that eating wild fermented food really is taking the flora of a place into your body. Folks have said since the time of the gold miners that there is something special about the wild bacterial and yeast fauna in San Francisco that makes the sourdough so good, and unlike the sourdough that you get France or Minnesota.

I also have a wild sourdough starter (named Roger), but have had mixed results with the bread from it. I don't know if it's the flour (I use mostly whole wheat), the fluctuating temperatures in our kitchen, my un-honed kneading skills, or something I haven't even thought of, but the bread I've made so far certainly leaves something to be desired. One of my goals this year is to make (more than once, so I know it's not just a fluke) some bread from Roger that I feel good about serving to other people. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Some wild bacteria (and lots of salt) in the salt flats by the San Francisco Airport

For a good, comprehensive book on bacteria I highly recommend Betsey Dexter Dyer's Field Guide to Bacteria. I seriously love this book. Before I had my very own copy I checked it out from library so many times that I maxed out my check-out allowance. Buy one for your bookshelf (or the bookshelf of someone you love who will let you borrow it).

Big Year

2008-01-09T20:08:00.000-08:00

Happy 2008!

When I opened my calendar to the new year, I found the words "Be Lucky" written across the top of this month. It's my handwriting, so I must have written it, but I can't for the life of me remember when or why. Did someone say it to me? Did I read it somewhere? I have no idea. Regardless of where it came from I've decided it's a good new year's resolution. I get so caught up sometime in the stuff that's going wrong-I spend most of my working hours thinking about ecological collapse, and living in the city really beats me down sometimes-it's helpful for me to have those moments of psychic shakedown that get me out of myself, out of my head, even just for a moment.

I live in a beautiful place with some amazing creatures in it (humans included). I just need to let myself be surprised by it, to be moved by it, to notice how lucky I am.

On a related note, this month marks the beginning of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area's Big Year, a campaign to get folks out into the GGNRA to learn about natural habitats in San Francisco. The Big Year is an educational outreach project disguised as a contest. The challenge? To see if anyone can find (alive, within the boundaries of the GGNRA) all 33 endangered and threatened species that live there. Their website has all of the details if you want to participate. Let me know if you do. I'll keep you posted on my sightings. Be lucky.

Mission Greenbelt Project

2007-11-13T15:28:00.000-08:00

The Mission Greenbelt Project opens this week. Come to the Campaign kickoff at the San Francisco Arts Commission gallery this Thursday 5 to 8 pm.

From the website:
The Greenbelt will consist of neighboring native plant sidewalk gardens in front of homes, apartment buildings, storefronts and schools between Franklin Square Park and Dolores Park. In addition to improving the environment and creating a habitat for birds, insects, reptiles and small mammals, the project will unite and strengthen a community.

Lights Out!

2007-10-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

It's lights out tonight! Lights Out SF is asking all San Franciscans to turn off non-essential lights from 8 to 9 tonight. Turn off your lights and head outside-the city is turning off the lights on the Bay Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge and TransAmerica building. Yay!

Why turn off your lights? Saving energy seems to be the big selling point for this event-and that's always a good thing. But saving energy doesn't really capture people's imagination, at least it doesn't mine. Saving energy feels so dour. Turn off your lights, turn down your heat, take shorter showers. All good ideas, don't get me wrong, but who really gets excited about any of those things?

So, what's a non-energy related reason to turn off your lights tonight? My favorite, and this one that makes this event so well-timed, is that lights at night cause light pollution. What's the big deal about light pollution? Light pollution is a huge problem for migrating birds. San Francisco is lucky enough to be smack in the middle of the Pacific Flyway, so this time of year we are flooded with birds making their way south for the winter. It's an incredible time to go birding around here and also, unfortunately, a really dangerous time for some of these birds. Lights left on overnight in skyscrapers disorient the birds. The US Fish and Wildlife Service estimates collisions with building windows cause 97 to 976 million bird deaths in the United States every year. Turning off the lights in skyscrapers at night can dramatically reduce this number. The AT&T tower in Chicago initiated a program to dim it's lights during bird migration and reduced bird collisions by 80%.

Light pollution also means that we can't see the stars. While this is clearly bad for astronomers, what impact does it really have on the rest of us? I read an essay by Rebecca Solnit the other day that talked about the night sky as a place worth saving because it is available to all of us. Every one of us can go outside and look up and access the huge mystery of the universe, the mystery of life and our lives on this tiny rock. More than once, when someone I love was far away, I've walked outside to look at the moon and been comforted knowing that at least we could look at the same sky, that maybe they were looking at the moon too.

So turn off your lights tonight, have a candlelight dinner and go out and watch some stars. I'll be looking too.

International Dark Sky Association

Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting (bibliography from a conference)

Study Urban Birds

2007-09-29T09:28:00.001-07:00

Are you a budding ornithologist or just a regular city-dweller who wants to take a closer look at the living things around you? Well, this project might be for you.

Cornell University has a long-standing, well-respected tradition of bird studies and now you don't even have to leave your neighborhood to help them out. Their ornithology lab has started an Urban Bird Studies project. Watch pigeons, crows and gulls, collect data and join their band of citizen-scientists. Doesn't that sound fun? Check it out.

Pigeon mating rituals are hilarious.
If you don't do it for the science, do it for the comedy.

Ferns!

2007-09-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

Something about primitive plants really gets me. Maybe it's their dependence on water. I imagine the mosses, liverworts and ferns all holding their breath with me as our dry, dry summers wear on. Saying little plant hallelujahs when the grey days and rain start again. It's finally started raining here again. Let's all breathe a sigh of relief.

This lovely fern has sprung up all on it's own in our yard. It's wedged under the fence between our house and the neighbor's-I swear it looks like it's growing right up out of the concrete.

Ferns are incredible plants. If you ever find yourself around a fern, dissecting microscope and lamp (yes, I realize that magical trio is probably rare in most lives), put a fern frond sori side up under the scope and watch what happens. Seriously, it's great. When the sori dry out they pop open like a pac-man and tons (thousands?) of spores fly out. These spores land on the ground and grow into the other life stage of the fern, the microscopic gametophyte that makes the sperm and eggs needed to make the plant we all think of as a fern.

(Fern gametophyte photo from http://www.uic.edu/classes/bios/bios100/summer2003/fernlifecycle.htm)

Incredibly, ferns are able to survive and thrive in some really harsh urban environments. Blair found one growing way up in the air on the metal supports of the freeway. Last month the New Yorker published this article (by Oliver Sacks of all people) describing a fern hike in the middle of New York-not in the park, but right down the city streets. You all in New York have some fantastic urban naturalist stuff going on.

Western Fence Lizard

2007-09-11T17:26:00.000-07:00

Scelorporus occidentalis

In our yard, catching insects and basking in the sun. Males have bright blue patches on their flanks and bellies, hence the other common name "Blue bellies". Apparently they can also change color to match their background, though this fella seemed to be content to stay the color he was when we were hanging out.

It turns out that we may have these lizards to thank for the relative rarity of Lyme Disease in California. Infected nymphs (young ticks) that feed on Western Fence Lizards do not have the Lyme Disease causing bacteria when they metamorphose into adults. The protein that protects the lizard from contracting Lyme moves into the ticks body and kills the disease causing bacteria in the host.

Now if they could just do something about poison oak.

Western Fence Lizards and Lyme Disease

Crow's Nest at 22nd and Mission

2007-08-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

This photo is from last year, when a pair of crows built a nest on the Sketcher's sign at 22nd and Mission. The nest is still there, and I saw some crows hanging out earlier in the year, but haven't seen anyone in awhile. Has anyone else seen any activity there?

Maybe they're all out smoking cigarettes.

On coyotes and sea bass

2007-07-17T17:24:00.000-07:00

(photo from Wikipedia)

As you may have already read, two coyotes living in Golden Gate Park were shot and killed this weekend after they reportedly attacked one dog and were seen stalking another one (see the Chronicle story here).

There has been a lot of heated comments posted on the local newspaper's website, both in favor of the shooting and against it. Some are arguing that we live in a city and wild carnivores like coyotes are are danger to pets and children. Others are arguing that coyotes were here before any of us and that we should learn to live with them (or at least move them somewhere else instead of shooting them).
This whole thing makes my heart feel heavy. I love that there are wild things in this city. Something inside me feels a particular thrill at knowing that there are large animals, living their large, wild animal lives in among our cafes and buses and built, managed stuff. Today, it's the negotiation of that boundary between wildness and cityness that I'm interested in. A few people posted comments admitting that they have purposefully fed coyotes living in San Francisco. Mostly I was aghast that anyone would feed coyotes (first, dog food is not coyote food. Second, feeding wild animals makes them less fearful of people, making it more likely that they will meet the end of the two GGP coyotes) but part of me can understand. There is something about wild animals, perhaps especially for us city folk, that is almost spellbinding. I think that urge to get close and have a relationship with animals is deep and unfortunately, sometimes misplaced. Have you seen Grizzly Man? Maybe that's an extreme example of someone "making friends" with wild animals, but I don't think the underlying feeling is uncommon at all. I feel it. I say good morning to the birds outside my house every morning when I fill their feeder and goodnight to my fish before I go to bed.

What is it about animals that makes us want to get close to them and what is our responsibility when we do? The museum where I work has an aquarium that I like to walk around in to give my eyes a break from my computer screen. Today, as I walked around the few late-afternoon visitors I took special care to notice what they were saying to the animals on display. Most people, even the adults, said hello when they walked up to a tank. Some people spent many minutes locked in some serious eye-contact with the fish. Do those fish know or care that we're there? I kind of doubt it. Do I love going downstairs and spending time with the sea bass? You bet I do.

Are we seeking out those relationships because these animals need us, or because we need them? I readily admit that I am sustained daily by the non-human creatures in my life. I also feel deeply responsible for them and realize that responsibility manifests itself in different ways. For my fish, it means that I feed them everyday. For my plants it means water. For the coyotes of San Francisco it means that I leave them alone, content with the knowledge that they are out there living their wild animal lives so close to mine.

Water Water Everywhere

2007-07-07T18:09:00.000-07:00

Grey and windy day today, but it's summer and still really dry, so I spent my moring having a slow cup of coffee and watering our plants. While I was moving plants and furniture I uncovered this charming little one living under our table outside.
It's a California Slender Salamander (Batrachoceps attenuatus). Check out it's short little arms and legs (four digits on each if you want to get really close). Like earthworms these animals breathe through their skin, which is why they hang out in moist environments, like the rotting wood on the underside of our table. If their skin dries out, they'll suffocate. They manage to survive the hot (or at least dry) months here by estivating, a sort of summer hibernation, where their metabolism and activity slow way down.
Having such absorbent skin makes amphibians extremely sensitive to even low concentrations of chemicals. All over the world amphibian populations are crashing, and while the exact causes are still unclear, pesticide exposure seems to be a significant contributing factor. I know when a lot of people think about pesticide exposure, they think of huge farms in the Central Valley (or wherever the large farming communities are where you live), but home pesticide use is greater (up to 10 times more per acre) than agricultural use. The pesticides and herbicides that you can buy at the store are serious chemicals and should be treated as such. Besides being dangerous for the critters in your backyard, they can be washed into waterways by rain and even transported in fog, impacting organisms far beyond the boundaries of your yard. So for heavens sake, be careful with those chemicals. Better yet, don't use them at all. Garden organically. You know it's a good idea.
This morning was not the first time that I've seen a salamander at our house. I remember the first time I saw one in our basement. I was shocked to find such a moisture-loving animal right smack in the middle of the city, in my house no less. Then I saw this map, and it started to make a little more sense. Today we are living in a houseboat on a concrete lake. But as recently as 200 years ago the land my house is on (18th between Mission and Valencia) was the middle of a pretty good sized body of water. My area of the Mission had lakes and streams and, I can only assume, all of the plants and animals that make up riparian communities. Somehow, incredibly, some of them have managed to hang on. That's pretty freaking incredible. Even surrounded by all this stuff, water and the living things that depend on it is never very far away, for me or for anyone else.

Amphibian-friendly gardening

Our friendly local organic demonstration garden

San Francisco Watershed finder

Happy Summer Solstice!

2007-06-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

It's the longest day of the year today! So whether you celebrate today as the first day of summer or the middle of it, I hope it's great. Go outside, eat some yummy food and watch the sunset. It'll be a whole year before we have this much daytime again.

Hello!

2007-06-19T16:43:00.000-07:00

Hey there. Welcome to my blog.
I'm not much on bios, but I wanted to start with a short intro for anyone reading who doesn't already know me. I'm a biologist, currently just finishing my second year of a Master's in ecology and systematic biology. My first love and research concentration is marine ecology but seeing as how I live my life smack in the middle of a city, I've been thinking a lot about how ideas in ecology, the idea of ecology, fits in urban places. I don't have much space to play around with these thoughts in my professional life, so I've created this space for my musings about urban ecology, mostly in San Francisco, but in other places as well.
Maybe I will post often, maybe not. After a day at work I start to feel allergic to my computer, so we'll just have to see how this little experiment works.
Thanks for reading.

Grey days, moss love

2007-06-12T18:56:00.000-07:00

I think when a lot of people think about ecology in the city, they think about big stuff, like trees and falcons and coyotes. I humbly propose that if we really want to understand and appreciate nature in the city, we need to pay attention to those things, but we also have to look down, and look closely at the other smaller, things that we share this space with. We have to start noticing-and once you do, the city will never be the same place again.
I've been thinking about moss a lot lately. Moss is one of those fantastic bits of wildness that most people don't ever notice. It's subtle and it's all over the place, sprouting up uninvited and untended, little bits of spontaneous green.
The plant that we all recognize as moss is haploid (unlike you, you're diploid). It does not have true stems or leaves. Sperm and eggs are produced in this phase of it's life cycle, and need water (usually rain) for the sperm to swim through to find an egg. Those structures growing up out of the moss are another life stage, produced after the fusion of the egg and sperm. This stage produces spores, which are dispersed by wind and, if they land in the right spot, will grow up to be new moss. Cool huh? Plant reproduction is pretty incredible. I'm sure it will come up again.
Next time you're out and about, look for some moss. You probably won't have to go far, this picture is on my front porch. If you find some, kneel down and check it out. Tell it I said hello.

Recommended Reading
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Moss
More moss greatness!