Over the Fourth of July weekend, I got a pleasant surprise. A California Kingsnake showed up in our garage (in southern Alameda County) in the middle of the afternoon! Perhaps the hot weather had something to do with it. Somehow it ended up picking the right house to visit. It was about a meter long [...]
sfbaywildlife.info was invited to participate in the Earth Week Faire at Foothill College on 20 April, 2011. It was organized by Gillian Schultz and the Sustainability group as part of the week long celebration. We were in great company – other participants included: Acterra Audubon Society California Native Plant Society Santa Clara County Open Space [...]
It was a nice weekend in early April and Las Trampas Regional Wilderness was beckoning. There was no rain. It turned out to be a good day for lizards and butterflies. And some early wildflowers were already blooming. The most common were the California Buttercups. Then I started seeing the butterflies. The first one was [...]
It was a nice warm afternoon in the East Bay this weekend. I was delighted to see butterflies flying around in my neighbors front yard, which has lots of flowers and catches the afternoon sun. There was the usual multitude of Fiery Skippers. They are very active and playful as they fly around and chase [...]
Over the weekend sfbaywildlife.info participated in a fun educational event organized by the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society (SCVAS). There were over 30 different booths form different organizations and groups. Hundreds of people attended – most of them families with kids. We had a small booth with lots of information about wildlife. We had photos [...]
This trip consisted of a long drive, starting from Livermore via Mines Road, continuing past the junction with Del Puerto Canyon, into San Antonio Valley, over the slopes of Mount Hamilton, past Joseph D. Grant County Park and ending in San Jose on Alum Rock Avenue. There is mostly private land on both sides of [...]
Last weekend we noticed a flurry of bird activity in the backyard. The perpetrators were a large number of American Robins feasting on a bush which was loaded with red berries. Closer inspection revealed a number of smaller birds – Cedar Waxwings – were also partaking of the feast. There must have been over 50 [...]
In early November, I came across an interesting inhabitant of our backyard. It was a Sharp-tailed Snake. We see them every once in a while, usually in summer. This was a small one, lying still under some leaf debris because of the cold weather I suspect. At first I thought it was dead but it [...]
Las Trampas is one of the few parks which is accessible early in the morning. We started our hike at about 7 am with high hopes for spotting wildlife. There was the faint hope of seeing a Puma (Mountain Lion) since they have been seen here. We decided to take the trail leading to Las [...]
This trip marked two special things. One was Father’s Day. The other was the start of our search for the elusive Coast Horned Lizard. We had read about some sightings in Lime Ridge Open Space and decided to head there. Our walk in Lime Ridge was through some fairly open grassy slopes, interspersed with some [...]