Natural History Journal

While it's always fun to come across any indication of a beaver's presence in the landscape , without a doubt seeing one of these amazing creatures in the wild is much more exciting!  Here in California's Central Valley, I've found those sightings to be rather rare - and therefore all the more special when they do occur.  While I regularly come across signs of beaver activity , such as felled trees, gnawed branches, dams, lodges and tracks, it's less frequent that I get to spend time watching these critters go about their daily business.  So, when I came across this beaver on a small reservoir in the foothills, I savored the experience.  Any moment with a beaver is an excellent opportunity to sit quietly beside the pond, watch and learn! American Beaver in a small reservoir in the foothills of the Sierra Beavers are best known for their sturdy dams, which they construct of logs, sticks and mud.  These dams are placed across streams and other areas of flowing wa...

Everyone knows and loves the songbirds: bluebirds, robins, finches, sparrows, warblers.  Jewel-like hummingbirds have a strong following among flower gardeners, and powerful raptors are favorites of many birders and non-birders alike.  Hunters toting shotguns as well as those with binoculars know and love waterfowl of all sorts (albeit for strikingly different reasons).  Shorebirds, with their often minute differences, have their own particular subset of devotees as well.  But it takes a special kind of dedication to become intimately familiar with one of the most mysterious groups of birds: the seabirds.   Living their lives entirely at sea and coming ashore only to breed, typically on rocky, remote islands, seabirds are largely inaccessible to the average birder (let alone non-birder!)  Many of us have our first introduction to seabirds with feet planted firmly on dry land, while peering across the blue expanse through spotting scopes.  There, d...

Like most folks, our travel plans for this summer have been scrapped.  As we try to come up with alternative plans compliant with social distancing regulations and such, I've been looking back at some of the magnificent places we have been fortunate enough to visit in the past several years. Two years ago, during our semi-annual desert pilgrimage, Eric and I spent a couple of days around the Salton Sea, California's largest and most imperiled lake. The tale of the Salton Sea stretches far back into geologic time to the Pleistocene (between about 2.5 million and 11,000 years ago), when the meandering course of the Colorado River shifted north as it crossed its broad delta at the northern edge of the ancestral Gulf of California.  This type of shift happened more than once, causing the Salton Basin (or Salton Sink) to alternately fill with water, then evaporate, then fill again.  The cycle was repeated several times, as evidenced by the presence of wave-cut shorelin...

Download this infographic (and more) from the World Wetland Day's website: https://www.worldwetlandsday.org/materials/-/categories/11086 Celebrated annually on February 2nd, World Wetlands Day marks the anniversary of the 1971 Ramsar  Convention, also known as the Convention on Wetlands, an international treaty created to support the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands around the world.  Currently, there are over 2,300 Ramsar sights, or Wetlands of International Importance, that have been designated worldwide - which is good news considering the sad state of our world's wetlands. Since 1970, 35% of wetlands have been lost, at a rate three times greater than the loss of forests ( source ).  In the continental United States, over half of all wetlands have been destroyed since the 1700's ( source , source ). California alone has lost between 90 and 95% of its wetlands. Sunset at Merced NWR, a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance, right here in Cali...