Goodbye Bear Valley

· San Francisco

Tonight is the last night in our sweet little place here on the edge of Coyote Valley and Bear Valley. We are mostly packed up, except for the random last-minute items. Today I went for our usual morning walk to Divide Meadow. We both had our usual workday and made a little dinner, and went for our final evening walk. At the end of it, while it was still pretty light (although the bats had come out), a beautiful golden barn owl scoured the meadow looking for prey. It was quite a sight to behold.

A little history: Divide Meadow once had a fancy Country Club for hunting and fishing for the wealthy of San Francisco. This operation was in effect from approximately the 1870s to the 1930s, and it had access to 76,000 acres for hunting introduced game. See page 25 for more details (PDF) of the Administrative History of Point Reyes. This came up in my book also, which is about the history of NPS and how it acquires land.

Location of the former Hunting Country Club, with a fancy clubhouse, cows, horses, and a fish pond!
Black Mountain in the morning. Today feels like the cool/cold of the Pacific is back
Waxing Gibbous 76.9% full
Baby Bananna Slug. Obviously, they must start out small, but I've only ever seen larger ones.
Black Mountain in the evening. Just before the American kestrel (Falco sparverius) and American barn owl (Tyto furcata) show
How many deer do you see? Hint: there are six there.
American barn owl (Tyto furcata)

Have an owl kinda night.

Sending oodles of love,

Tawnia

Bird List - 34 species today

Acorn Woodpecker
American Barn Owl
American Crow
American Kestrel
Anna's Hummingbird
Band-tailed Pigeon
Bewick's Wren
California Quail
California Scrub-Jay
California Towhee
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Common Raven
Dark-eyed Junco
Eurasian Collared-Dove
European Starling
Golden-crowned Kinglet
House Finch
Lesser Goldfinch
Northern Flicker
Olive-sided Flycatcher
Osprey
Pacific Wren
Peregrine Falcon
Pine Siskin
Song Sparrow
Spotted Towhee
Steller's Jay
Swainson's Thrush
Turkey Vulture
Western Bluebird
Western Flycatcher
Western Gull
Wilson's Warbler
Wrentit