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April 30, 2007
Gripes About Stripes: Stripes Do Not A Tiger Make...
How Many Prongs Does A Fork Have?
Most people, when asked, will not hesitate to say four. I, on the other hand, want more information.
What kind of fork are we talking about here? A tuning fork, for example, has two prongs, whereas my mother has cocktail forks with three prongs, and dinner forks with four. I've never seen a 5-prong fork, but with the wonders of the world wide web I find that there is a five-prong manure fork for cleaning out farm stalls. I won't be forgetting about this use case anytime soon.
I have always valued this quirk of how my brain works. It makes for interesting conversations and, I like to think, has made me more receptive to change. I am less likely to believe that there is only one "single" answer, the only correct one. Lucky for me, I also learned early to tune my answers to what the poser of the question wants to hear - a lesson that allowed me to do well on standardized tests and such, despite thinking that many of the questions were foolishly narrow.
When I am the one posing the questions, I am often greatly dismayed by the lack of creativity shown in the answers. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, assuming they know of the other possible answers, but choose the one most likely to appease. However, when I follow up with asking for additional answers, what I get are blank looks.
So, what does this have to do with animals? Well, several times in the past few months, I've had frustrating conversations with people about animals.
I was sitting in a fabric store the other day when a fellow patron came up to me with a giant bolt of black and white striped fake fur.
"Do you think this looks like tiger fur?" she asks.
The fur is clearly meant to be zebra. It even says Zebra on it. I think to myself, well, it could be a white tiger, the cross-breed made famous by Siegfried & Roy, but I ask what it's for.
"My daughter's going to be a tiger in the school play," the mother says.
Now I know I cannot recommend this zebra fabric to this woman. It has to be stereotypical tiger stripes or the audience will be confused...Unless the audience is truly unaware of what a tiger looks like. Yes, it sounds unlikely, but then two other recent discussions pop into my head.
The other day, I was down watching the sea otters again when a family including three children (~13, ~10 and ~8 yrs old, with their mother) walk up to one of the otters sleeping on the beach. I'm sitting there glaring at them and shaking my head as they approach, but they ignore me. After scaring the otter back into the water by shouting at it and trying to touch it, they walk back by me (now rather pissed off) and my husband and I catch their conversation. They thought the otter was a seal. A seal??? How one can mistake a fluffed up otter for a seal, I don't know, but all four of them thought that's what it was. I kept hoping the nearby ranger would bust them, but she didn't. I had foolishly expected the mother to keep her kids in line, and by then it was too late to intervene.
Another friend, a mother of two young children, often looks at my pictures. Recently she told me that she loves my tiger pictures and mentioned how cute the tiger cubs are. I start racking my brain, when did I put up any tiger cub pictures? I don't think I have posted any of those recently... only to realize she's talking about my African lion shots from Kenya. The first time I corrected her, I felt like a hypocrite, telling her that the easy way to tell was that lions don't have spots or stripes and tigers have spots. Cheetahs and leopards have spots. Something easy so she learns a bit about telling big cats apart. I would have forgiven her for confusing leopards and cheetah, but lions and tigers? Even with habitats a continent apart, people still get confused??
Sometimes, these mistakes are charming. I get a little chuckle from the grade school kids who write me about where to find out more about the tusks of the elephant seals and such. Other times, like the otter-seal incident, I am shocked. Still, I'm cannot help but think to myself: young lions DO have spots and stripes. They fade as they grow to adulthood.
Posted by sorsha at 4:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 25, 2007
Thanks To The Hybrid: One-Tank Travels
My husband and I used to roadtrip a lot. We hit up much of the Western United States and Canada, always camping, staying with friends, or finding some interesting place to stop. We got a National Park Pass and roamed through just about every National Park and National Monument we went anywhere near. Good times.
We had our favorites, like summer in Yosemite's Tuolomne Meadows and early morning autumn circuits in Yellowstone for the wolves and elk mating displays. Pinnacles National Monument has a great hike through a long cave that requires flashlights, not to mention its a great place to spot California condors. Zion is only a short drive from Las Vegas and much more up our alley than gambling. Olympic National Park has areas that look like the Swiss Alps, and others that remind one of New Zealand in the rainy season. The Canadian parks of the Rockies are especially beautiful, including Montana's Glacier National Park on the border. There really isn't a park we wouldn't go back to again.
Except California gas prices have just about doubled since our roadtripping days in the late 1990's.
Don't get me wrong. I have always thought our gas prices should be more like the rest of the world's. People complain about how fuel is so expensive everywhere else... but it's really about how our gasoline has been so underpriced. Our 5,000 mile trips became cost-prohibitive, not to mention the negative environmental impacts in terms of gas-guzzling for no particularly good reason. Despite the fact that we almost always supported the local businesses in the areas we visited, none of the cars we owned was particularly gas efficient. We moved on to more backpacking and hiking, and less driving. Flying and then traveling locally. Better all around.
When my husband announced he wanted to get a hybrid, I was only tentatively in favor.
Why only tentatively? Well, we had two cars already and so this meant shedding one of our existing cars. At the time, hybrid meant Prius to me, and I really don't like them. I find them uncomfortable and worry that they are more fad like the VW bugs were. I worried about safety, comfort, and options, but I didn't want options I thought frivolous and likely to make for lazy drivers (like the backing up video when you should be doing head checks). We are also planning to have kids soon, so this new car would have to be able to fit more than just the two of us (so no 80+ mpg Honda Insight, unfortunately).
My hubby wanted something comfortable for his commute, but still something that got decent gas mileage. Also, we both are suckers for a powerful car. Shane test-drove them all, and settled on one that met all his needs - the Honda Accord Hybrid. I was moderately horrified that it only came in Automatic transmission, but I admit, I have always been better at multitasking in the car than my husband, so having a free hand is a good thing for him on his 35 mile daily commute. We've had it for a while now, and I still consider it "his" car. I steal it when I plan to drive more than he does on his daily commute, in order to save gas. It's grown on me.
This past weekend, we took our first roadtrip with the car. To call the 1000 mile round-trip long is laughable, given our past treks. The time passed very quickly, even sitting in the back seat to make room for a motion-sickness prone grandmother. We had no complaints from anyone on the 10 hour drive, and I admit it was nice to be driving something comfortable instead of the Jeep Wrangler (our other, functional but not particularly comfortable car). It would have been a perfect trip report had it not been for some unrelated troubles.
The most impressive part, though, was the fact that we made it all the way there, from the Bay Area in central California to central Oregon, on exactly one tank of gas. Costco Regular, to be exact.
I always forget that Oregon gas stations are all Full Service. It's interesting to me that pumping gas is a profession there, offering thousands of jobs. Another benefit is that it results in a lot fewer gas spills at the pump, so it's good for the environment.
Posted by sorsha at 1:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 18, 2007
Peak Pest Period: Invasives & Summer Travel
We touched down in Nairobi, Kenya, in the early morning as the day was just beginning and the temperature was still mild. It was our second international stop on our trip around the world, and we were tired but excited.
As we taxied to a stop, flight attendants walked swiftly up and down the cabin, spraying a white fog of undefined purpose. We all covered our faces, coughing. Not the most pleasant experience, but at least on our flight out when they did it again, they explained that it was a pesticide and we could cover our faces if we wanted, but it had "no harmful effects" for humans.
I give them an A for effort and a D for execution, since no one, not even the flight attendants, could explain what or why, just that they had to do it as a policy. Invasives sneak into your luggage, and travel along with you, just like the flu virus travels the world, and all have found airplanes to be the best mode of travel.
Think about it: a hitchhiking insect or plant is more likely to make it to the new environment if it gets there quickly. Slow trains and ships often subject goods (and people) to drastically different conditions such as extreme heat and cold, on the way to the destination, whereas the regulated cabin of an airliner is designed as an enclosed pocket of steady climate for you reach your destination comfortably and quickly. Even if the invasive arrives in bad shape, if the destination provides a welcoming habitat, then the invasive can recover - often with disastrous results.
This new research may help explain why:
...research reveals that—as for people in many countries—June, July, and August are the peak months for long-distance travel.
Previous studies have shown that international flights are a significant factor in unwelcome insect invasion. Some 73 percent of recorded pest interceptions in the U.S., in fact, occur at airports.
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Pest transfer between far-flung locations is more likely when the weather is similar in both regions, making it easy for the pests to settle into their new home.
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"Hawaii, with its moderate year-round climate, is a hot spot for pest invasions," Tatem said. "It is linked to a similar climate in Central America in April, Asia in July, and the Caribbean in October."
In general, though, June, July, and August are the peak months for insect travel.
More At: National Geographic: Invasive Bugs, Plants Prefer Summer Plane Flights
California has agricultural screening facilities on every major highway in and out of the state, but anyone who goes to Tahoe with any regularity knows that they are not always open. When I drove here from Vermont one summer, we camped along the way. At the California border, we had to fork over our head of lettuce. It was the end of summer then, though, whereas the Tahoe Truckee ag station is only a handful of miles from where the Donner Party camped - not much can live at that altitude without a Safeway and PG&E. Still, many coastal areas have very small fluctuation in temperature and rarely get a frost. These areas are more likely to host invasives.
Ironically, one of the invasive plants most complained about in Santa Cruz is the Ice Plant, which grows along highways and seacliffs, choking out natives. Where ice plant grows, little else does. According to Wikipedia, it was Caltrans that first started using ice plant along railways and roadsides, because it grew easily all year round, with low maintenance and pretty flowers, and more importantly, it provided a fire barrier. It also only grows a few inches high, so trimming it would not be an issue. Several killing frosts over the past few decades have decimated swaths of ice plant in Santa Cruz county, leaving it patchy at best.
Perhaps you've had your shoes treated after a trip from Europe, or had your bags Ag-screened after a trip to Hawaii, and you probably thought it was an annoyance. This summer, when you make your travel plans, give a little thought to what you're tracking and where it may be going.
Posted by sorsha at 11:22 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 17, 2007
Responsible Rabbitry: You Bought A Bunny, Didn't You...
Belated Easter Tidings.
Just about every year, in some form or another, I post dire warnings about not buying your kid a bunny for Easter. Instead, I plead with you to get them a chocolate bunny instead. Unfortunately, this year I was out of town and I didn't get around to posting my tirade. I just know you did it. You went out and got yourself a bunny. And now you have no idea what to do with it. So this year, as a responsible rabbit-owner I'm going to post a couple of hints for you.
A Dozen Tips For Responsible Rabbitry
- Adult Rabbits Are Easily Trained (Check Out: House Rabbit Society)
- In Rabbits, Positive Reenforcement Works, Negative Reenforcement Doesn't
- Rabbits Love Bananas, Greens Like Fennel, Carrots Not So Much
- Rabbits Stomp or Thump To Warn Friends (Including Owners) of Danger
- Cedar/Pine Shavings Are Poisonous, Recycled Newsprint Pellet Cat Litter Isn't
- Rabbits Are Easy To Hypnotize - Useful For Nail-Clipping, Injuries & Meds
- Rabbits Must Munch - Give Munchables like Paper Towel Rolls As Toys
- Pet Rabbits Should Not Live Outside Due To Diseases, Among Other Things
- Rabbits Live Much Longer When Fixed
- Rabbits Are Happier In Mated Pairs
- Rabbits Love Treats, But Have Their Own Preferences
- Rabbits Dance When They Are Happy
Oh, and one last thing. Do not pick up a rabbit by its ears or even the scruff of the neck. You should always scoop them up under their belly. If they're struggly, put a hand over their eyes to calm them and then pick them up. Bunnies are best held in your arms like a baby. If you're worried about getting nibbled (biting is the sign of a scared or unhappy rabbit), then hold the bunny with its head up on your shoulder, against you, as if you're burping a baby. This way the bunny can see around it and you can control its wiggling.
Posted by sorsha at 2:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 16, 2007
Limb-Loving Lizards: Crocodile Bites Off Hand But...
I was browsing through National Geographics week in pictures over the weekend when I suddenly stopped and my jaw dropped. Behind me, my husband stopped talking and started gawking at my screen.
The amazing picture of a big crocodile with a bloody fist in its mouth looked surreal. It took me a good few seconds of staring at it before my husband nudged me to look at the follow-up picture of the smiling vet waving at the camera after his hand was reattached hours later.
Veterinarian Chang Po-yu was reaching through iron bars to remove tranquilizer darts before treating the 440-pound (200-kilogram) reptile when the inadequately sedated animal bit the vet's forearm off.
But for the vet, it wasn't quite a farewell to arm.
After being shot at twice, but apparently unhit, the croc dropped the arm. After seven hours of surgery, doctors successfully reattached the appendage...
More At: National Geographic Week In Photos: Croc Bites Off Hand
That's some amazing surgery. I hope they meant shot with a tranq, not killed, but somehow I doubt it.
Find out more about Nile Crocodiles in our African Field Notes.
Posted by sorsha at 10:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Grass Guzzlers: White Rhinos For Sale
Your average cow might need about 25lbs of grass per day to eat, while a white rhino needs more like 100lb of grazing material daily. This translates to about 23 acres of bermuda grass to feed a single rhino for a year. Hippos also eat about 100lbs of grass per evening.
Clearly quite a bit larger than my backyard, bummer. There goes my idea of getting a pet hippo or a pet rhino. Still, zoos and game farms buy excess wildlife from parks like the South Africa's Kruger National Park each year. This legitimate wildlife trade keeps parks from becoming overpopulated and overgrazed, as well as enhancing the genetic diversity and range of species.
South African National Parks is selling as many as 100 white rhinoceroses from Kruger National Park to the general public. The rhinos will cost from $9,000 to $37,000 each, depending on sex. Females are most expensive and are sold with their young so as not to separate mother and calf.
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There are an estimated 13,000 white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum) in South Africa, where they are endemic. Kruger is home to as many as 7,000 of the endangered herbivores, accounting for roughly half of the worldwide population. Sales of various animal species, including elephants, antelope, and buffalo, generated about $1 million for SANParks last year.
More At: National Geographic News: Your Own Pet Rhinoceros?
You can find out more about African rhinos in our African Field Notes.
Posted by sorsha at 4:58 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Condors: Carrion Claws & Clutches
Sometimes mistaken for a distant airplane, the California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) with an average wingspan of almost 3 meters, once ruled the skies along the Pacific coastline.
Natural declines in population, combined with slow maturity and complex breeding habits, made these large birds vulnerable when the huge rush of people arrived in the West in the 1800's. Ranchers assumed that if a condor was eating a dead cow, it must have killed it, and they were often shot on sight. Add to this that when a condor found a hunting carcass, it would also suffer from lead poisoning when it ingested the bullets. Soon the California Condor's numbers dwindled to 22, all of which lived in captivity.
Had the ranchers looked closer, they would have seen that the condor does not have sharp claws like a bird of prey and eats carrion almost exclusively. Instead, the condors have blunt, straight claws with an elongated middle toe meant for ripping through the tough hides of dead animals - something other birds of prey cannot do with much efficiency.
Weighing in at up to 30lbs, the condor prefers larger kills. They will travel long distances - in the hundreds of miles - in order to eat each day, homing in on a kill by watching where other birds have gathered for the feast instead of using scent. The California coastline, with its many seal and sea lion rookeries, provided a substantial food source for these birds.
In the past two decades, Condor breeding programs like the one at the San Diego Zoo have helped reestablish a wild population of California Condors. Today there are about 300 condors in the world, about a third living wild in California, the Grand Canyon, and Baja, Mexico.
While condor experts have managed to breed captive condors, breeding in the wild is a tougher problem. Condors mate for life, and though the pickings are slim, juvenile condors won't necessarily choose one another as mates.
Luckily, there has been quite a few positive signs recently that the wild condor programs are working. There's been some nesting activity in Big Sur since last year, as well as some evidence that the condors have been somewhat social, hanging out around a Gray Whale carcass. At least one chick has survived in Big Sur and is now at least 2 years old. Then this month, there was some great news from another condor hotspot - Baja.
This week biologists working with the California Condor Recovery Program discovered the first California condor egg laid in Baja California, Mexico since their reintroduction to the Sierra San Pedro de Martír National Park in 2002.
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Condors #217, a 7-year-old female, and #261, a 6-year-old male, were introduced as juveniles and have only recently entered breeding age. “We had been suspicious of nesting activity over the past month and after repeated attempts we finally located the nest 800 feet (250 meters) off the canyon floor,” said Dr. Wallace. “It is situated in a deserted golden eagle nest. They made an excellent and spectacular choice.”
More At: CRES: Free-flying Condors in Mexico Reach Historic Milestone; Pair Lays Project's First Egg
This is not the first time that condors have had chicks in the wild, but it is the first documented case in the Baja condor range since almost a century ago.
Posted by sorsha at 12:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 12, 2007
Animal Aging
I am posting this on the very moment of my birth. Luckily, I now live in the same time zone as the one when I was born which made it easier. I think it would be perfect if we hadn't changed our daylight savings policy this year. Oh, well. It's for our own good.
Anyway, I had great plans on talking about animal aging. I was going to calculate my age in human, dog, cat and any other animal years I could calculate. However, I was in for a surprise. The dog years thing is basically completely untrue. It's not a 7-to-1 ratio like I was always told.
So basically, I'm 30 (+/- 1 hour) and I've been living a lie.
I came up with a new plan: I was going to estimate animal ages myself based on my knowledge of certain mammal's weaning age, sexual maturity and lifespan. Like, for example, elephant seal years. But it's not as easy as I thought it would be since males rarely live past 14yrs but females can live to 20. But they reproduce basically until they die, and human women generally don't. Also, I would have to determine the sexual maturity of humans, and at 30 (+/- 1.25 hours), I am not quite sure I'm there yet.
| Laurie's Very Scientific Aging Table | |||
| Creature | Weaned Age | Sexual Maturity Age | Lifespan |
| Northern Elephant Seal | 28 days | ~3 years | ~20 years |
| Sea Lion | Up to a year | ~4 years | ~20 years |
| African Elephant | Up to 2 years | ~10 years | ~70 years |
| Me | 1.5 years | ~30 years (~12 if you're being precise) | ~80 years |
Blast. So there goes my idea of estimating my relative female northern elephant seal age. I can safely say I'd be over 5 and under 18, and probably more like.. 10 because I'm basically in the middle of my plausible breeding years, so to speak.
Animals certainly age, but as you can see, its pretty complicated. Mammals like dogs and cats relative "years" vary greatly by breed, but its mostly about the size of the animal. Genetic diversity, especially regarding inherited defects and diseases, also play a significant role.
So a mouse's lifecycle is going to be shorter (and therefore faster) than a dog's. Dogs are a terrible example, though, since many of the breeds suffer from inbreeding and congenital disorders. Irish Wolfhounds are considered one of the largest (tallest) dog breeds but they have very short lifespans (7 yrs) whereas the yappy little Jack Russell Terrier lives an average of 14 years. Why? Jack Russell gene pool is strong, and they haven't suffered from heavy inbreeding, whereas the Irish Wolfhound suffered from a genetic bottleneck during the 1800's.
Live To Breed
One of the other issues with age estimation is that most animals do not age linearly. They rapidly reach sexual maturity and stay there. Life expectancy is different in the animal kingdom, where one is hunted. You want to grow up fast and perpetuate your species.
Weaning age varies greatly amongst species. We wean our children at various ages from just after birth through childhood, depending on our life plans, our class, our culture, and the available food. The Northern elephant seal weans her pup after about four weeks, whereas the sea lions nurse their pups for up to a year.Why so different? The elephant seal mother fasts while she nurses, her food source is far away. The sea lion nurses her pup for a few days, and then goes hunting, coming back and nursing more. Incidentally, this difference in behavior explains why vocalization is so much more important for sea lions - when mom comes ashore, she has to find her pup amongst all the others, whereas the elephant seal mother-pup bond is mostly (but not exclusively) due to proximity.
Let's look at something bigger. A female African Elephant may live to be more than 70 years old, if she's not poached first. It takes over a decade for her to reach sexual maturity, but she can reproduce until she's almost 60. She may let a calf nurse for upwards of two years if she does not have another calf right away.
Posted by sorsha at 6:29 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 11, 2007
California Sea Otters: Haul Out On Land
The best, not to mention the most dangerous, aspect of nature photography, is that wildlife will always surprise you.
I've found that animals in the wild rarely display your "typical" behavior. National Geographic knows this very well, just look at the recent April 2007 article called Lessons Of The Hunt, where a young leopard kills her first baboon only to adopt its infant temporarily. Certainly not what you'd expect would happen, especially to a young leopard afraid of baboons.
My current special project, the California Sea Otters, is an excellent example of how wildlife doesn't always act as you'd expect. Everytime I go down to visit the otters, I see something I'd never read about before.
Bigger Rafts
The first time I visited Moss Landing, there was a raft of about 50-60 otters hanging out together. I had read that you might see packs of up to 10 together and that they segregated themselves by gender. I will occassionally see a small group of otters, often the younger ones, break off from the main group and play in another part of the slough, but for the most part, the main group stays together.
Shy or Not?
Most of the otters are pretty skittish, unless they're busy eating. When boats approach too close, they all dive and move to another part of the slough. Still, some otters are less shy than others.
Take this past Monday, for example. I had staked out this great spot to photograph the Moss Landing wildlife. It was low tide and I positioned myself at the end of the jetty, down at the waterline. Here, the seals, otters and shorebirds cruised in from the ocean and were almost on top of me before they noticed me. This made for some great seal and bird shots and the main group of otters drifted closer and closer. I was watching a Western Grebe, with its beady red eyes, fish under the water at my feet and so I didn't notice the little otter come zooming around the jetty within 10 feet of me. This otter, whom I've dubbed Baby because it had one pink and one blue tag on its flippers, swam right up to me and made to jump up on the rock next to me. I was so surprised, I took a quick step backward, away from the otter, and so Baby decided to stay in the water and look at me instead. Movement or talking on my part did not phase Baby, who floated so close the long lens of my camera could barely focus. After about 10 minutes, the otter rejoined the main group about 20 meters away.
How Close Is Too Close?
Getting close to wildlife is always a bit art and a bit luck. Stealth helps, too. You're stalking these wild creatures, and putting yourself in amongst them, hopefully without upseting them or causing yourself harm. I generally use the following rules: start with the Marine Mammal Protection Act and stay back 25-30 feet, but stay back even further if the animal seems wary or bothered by your presence.
Sometimes, you have to use a bit of stealth and underhandedness. I was able to sneak up amongst a large group of notoriously shy harbor seals the other day by using the fact that some idiots were scaring them from another direction and they weren't watching me. I couldn't stop the guys from bothering the seals, so I used the distraction to my advantage, placing myself between two groups. I also have found that as long as you do not directly approach a seal, but instead zigzag back and forth closer, they do not panic and enter the water. Once in position, I get down close to the ground and look small and non-threatening. This way, the seals can relax and I can relax and take their pictures.
I know I'm doing it right when the seals resume their original activities and the shorebirds start approaching and fishing within a few feet of me. When its time to go, I slowly rise and back away, never approaching any of the animals. I walk backwards to keep an eye on the animals, and pause if they seem troubled.
When Too Close Happens
This brings me to what happened two days ago. I'm still riding on a high of my immense good luck at the experience, but at first it was a bit unsettling because I got trapped using my own rules, which leads me to another good piece of advice: Always have a secondary escape route.
I had positioned myself at the base of a seacliff, in the afternoon shade with the sun setting behind me. The otters were right in front of me, frollicking in the sun. They were well lit, but I wasn't, and there was a pretty strong wind. In retrospect, my position hunkered down on the beach was really too good - they couldn't smell me and the sun blinded them from seeing me well. Some of them did know I was there, they would come up to within about 10 feet of shore, look at me, and swim away.
A couple of otters had been teasing me like this for about two hours, and I was getting some great shots, intently focused on the otters right in front of me. I do try to be aware of my surroundings, but the beach was only 20 feet wide and my back was to the cliff, so I didn't check my left, right or behind very often. So because of this, I had missed a rather large otter standing in about an inch of water up the beach from me, and in the other direction, another one was looking like it was doing the same.
Now comes the weird part. First one otter, then another, and another, come crawling out of the water around me. They blocked off my way off the beach without walking by them. The first large otter hauled out and curled up smack in the middle of the 20 foot beach, forcing me to skirt around it with very little room to spare. This otter, Sleepy (my husband named her), went straight to sleep on the beach, and wasn't the slightest bit upset by my setting up the camera about 30 feet away from her.
As I sat there watching her, another otter hauled out, came up to her and poked her with its nose. She opened her eyes, rolled over, and went back to sleep. The other otter went back into the water to play. Some young boys came along while I went to the car and tried to poke it and pet it and feed it crab legs, but I explained they shouldn't bug it like that (they were tourists and barey spoke English and didn't know it was an otter).
I went back and took more pictures of Sleepy and told my husband to come down to the beach and see this, because we hadn't known that sea otters ever came on land. Its not that they're not capable, but they are really quite graceless on land. They walk along on their front flippers and drag their wet back end out of the surf. When he arrived, it was almost sunset. We watched more and more otters haul out. We counted 12 otters on our short stretch of beach. Seven of which had hauled out together and were running around on the beach, doing that hop-like ferret walk. At least thirty more otters still floated in the shallows nearby. We got some video footage and I'll post it on the podcast feed later this month.
I cannot find much of anything online about sea otters hauling out on land. It's a very rare event, and to see so many is really amazing. I've contacted the Monterey Bay Aquarium to ask about this behavior. I read that mothers often beach their babies while they hunt, but there were no babies here. These were resting otters and some younger ones playing and running around.
I would never have anticipated that the otters would have come up on the beach. If I had, I would have been paying more attention to my flanks while I was shooting. Luckily, Sleepy was just that, and she wasn't bothered when I had to sneak by her, she just kept on snoozing.
Posted by sorsha at 9:24 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
April 6, 2007
African Field Notes Updated - Info! Video! Pix!
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April 4, 2007
Moss Landing State Beach: A Natural Graveyard
The beach is a natural graveyard. Things inevitably wash up, and for the most part, this an integral part of the shoreline ecosystem. Shore creatures rely on this rotting stuff as a source of food. Low tide may not smell particularly good, but its one of the best times to see birds, since they arrive to pick through the ocean's leavings.
I've been spending a lot of time at the beach lately, photographing Monterey Bay wildlife like the Northern Elephant Seals, the Southern Sea Otters, and various other marine life and shorebirds. Today I went down to Moss Landing.
I went to Moss Landing to photograph the resident raft of otters. Obligatory cute Southern Sea Otter photo below:
There certainly were a lot of otters there (upwards of 60). Floating about, grooming, eating, playing. There is also a small colony of harbour seals, including a couple of very young pups from this season (March-June). Since it's still winter, the number of bird species is ridiculous. It was the shere abundance of wildlife - both in the sea and the skies - along Elkhorn Slough that attracted me there in the first place.
I'm used to seeing dead animals, especially young seals, washed up on beaches. It's a fact of life that the nearer you are to a rookery (mating colony), the more likely you are to see carcasses. Only the strongest will survive, and that's the way it should be. The weaker ones certainly don't perish in vain. They become a meal to some predator like a great white shark or a killer whale, not to mention all the scavenger fishes and birds. Their demise also keeps the living population strong, genetically. There are a lot of stupid and lazy people out there, but nature isn't as forgiving - stupid and lazy animals get munched.
I cannot think of a place in the Monterey Bay where I've seen more diverse species that at Elkhorn Slough and Moss Landing Beach. It's not really where I'd go to see a seal rookery - for that I'd go to Año Nuevo, but I cannot think of another place, other than at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, that I can always spot at least a few otters.
So I stalked some otters, shot their cute little faces. I think that California schools should teach the marine mammal act - and the stay back 25 feet rule. Too often I see people harassing the wildlife. Even beyond the 25 feet, if you are bothering the animal, you should not approach closer. Some animals, like the elephant seal, don't seem to fussed with people. Harbour seals, however, are quite a bit more skittish.
Anyway, so I was tromping around in the low tide. About 30 seconds from the car, I ran across a dead young harbor seal. I'm no forensics expert, but I've seen the holes in animals before and thats usually from the birds and scavengers. The fact that the seal's head was rather non-existent makes me think it more likely got run over by a boat or something. Unfortunately the seals have taken up residence a stone's throw from the yacht harbor, and the boats are forced to go by them each time they want to leave the harbor. Then they have to sail through the raft of otters and out past the getty, also full of otters. Its basically a wildlife gauntlet and its basically impossible to keep the 25ft distance.
This is when I decided to take some pictures of otters. Happy, live otters. I noticed that the beach was covered with bones and large abalone shells, which I attribute with the otters, since they are nawing away on such things not 50 feet from me.
After a while, I decide to walk down a bit to see if the baby harbour seal is available for an Easter photo. Oh, and that's when I saw a little bunny in the coastal brush. So as I'm walking down the beach, I see a dead bird. Then another. And another. Not little birds, big birds. Duck-sized and larger. You know I cannot identify birds in life, so don't ask me what they were.
Shorebirds... Dead ones.
At first, I just told myself it was normal, but after the 10th dead bird, I was starting to feel a bit uneasy. There are a lot of birds here, so does that mean its normal to have a lot of dead birds?
When does the sheer number of dead birds become enough to be a concern? When does it become a red flag that something is very wrong here, something that needs to be addressed? The answer is: I don't know. I'm curious what other people think on this.
So much is going on here that could be having a negative impact. It's a very strange wildlife refuge, to be honest. Moss Landing is also home to a rather large power plant that cycles over a billion gallons of water a day. Huge smokestacks, surrounded by artichoke fields and guarded by otters. Very ironic. Sometimes the water the plant expels is quite a bit hotter than the ocean water, which causes problems. There's also the harbor pollution and boat traffic from the fishing docks and the yacht harbor. The surrounding land is all farmland, with pesticides potentially washing into the slough. The list goes on and on. Winter is bird migration time, maybe it's bird flu?
I tell myself, though, that there must be a reason so much wildlife settles here. Something must have been done right or they would move on. I like to think the otters choose to be there.
What do you think?
Posted by sorsha at 3:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
