Around the world with two suitcases
We’ve been having a great time watching the birds on the bird feeder and successfully shooed away the squirrels. We met our match today….
Here’s the raccoon that visited yesterday, shook the feeder and ate what fell out.
Here’s the bird feeder this morning….
Empty. And there was no seed left on the deck.
He also drank all the sugar water out of the hummingbird feeder. I guess I’ll be bringing these in at night now.
This week I finished making the appointments that I will need during our brief stay in the Chicago area in mid-November.
We’ve also dug deeply into our “Hikers Hip Pocket Guide to the Mendocino Coast,” a wonderful book, and found paths that we had not yet visited and small beaches to visit (see Jonathan’s Facebook page for more photos).
Beachcombing was excellent, as well. I found another abalone shell entangled in a bank of seaweed, a bright orange corner sticking out of a tangled mass. I pulled the seaweed away from the shell in a mighty tug—and found that under the seaweed were a whole bunch of bugs. Ick!!! I rinsed it out with seawater and carried home my prize.
The deposits inside the shell washed out very well.
Wednesday was the monthly bird walk hosted by the Mendocino branch of the Audubon Society. Great company and lots of birds, even on an overcast/foggy day at the Botanical Garden.
Mendocino Coast Audubon Society:
Wednesday afternoon we went looking for the pileated woodpecker on a path between Hwy 1 and McKerricher state park that is marked by a pale green house that is called the “turquoise house”. We saw a couple of wingbeats, but didn’t get a good look.
Jonathan woke me up at 7 am to look at the raccoon on the deck, raising hell with the bird feeders. (He was a very chubby raccoon). He managed to tear apart and eat much of the najjar seed that I had dangling from a branch in a sock-like holder. Yesterday was the first time that the “right” birds visited it–goldfinches that held on to the sock with their feet while pulling out seeds. Now it’s history. The raccoon also managed to dump birdseed out of the “squirrel-protected” feeder onto the deck and settle down for a browse. He left in what Jonathan described as slow-motion. This is definitely in the cute….but…. category.
Thursday we explored for tidepools near Virgin Creek beach north of Ft. Bragg before Jonathan visited the dentist.
On our way home we made a detour to the Caspar Cemetery. This is one of the most beautiful cemetery sites I’ve ever seen. It is a small plot, a bit more than 1/4 acre with tombstones that go back to 1860. The cemetery is completely surrounded by thick forest and is quiet and peaceful–also a good place to look for birds. We saw forest edge birds, chickadees, brown creeper, and perhaps nuthatch. There are crossbills that visit this spot because some of the trees around the cemetery are Sitka spruce. According to Tim, our Audubon group leader, this is one of the southernmost occurrences of Sitka spruce and it’s seeds are preferred food of the crossbills. We didn’t see them, but the place was very much worth a visit.
We walked along the beach and took photos of the town.
Tonight we watched the intro to an episode of “Murder, She Wrote”, now that we know it was filmed in Mendocino, not a town in Maine. Many of the buildings look the same now as they did when the series was playing, 1984-1996.
We found a nice bench on Main Street.
For a real change of pace, I made dinner tonight, a variation on a Peruvian recipe called “pastel de acelgas”. Chard pie sounds so much less appetizing, but it was delicious.
We are having fun with birds. Not only did we see a new bird on the beach, and a bobcat, but when we came home Jonathan was watching the bird feeder and said,
“Get your binoculars, there’s a new bird out here.”
It was a family of red crossbills, male, female and 3 chicks. These are the weirdest birds. The tips of their beaks cross, and overall their beaks are bigger than you’d think for the size of the birds.
Despite the photo, I got a good look at them–very cool.
We visited two state beaches over the past couple of days. Manchester State Beach is very, very long and sandy, though the path to the beach is not too clear:
We sat on a big log and ate lunch, and browsed through the driftwood for interesting pieces.
We watched the sunset from the Mendocino headlands. It was clear to the horizon with whales spouting.
Spent much of the next day at Greenwood State Beach, a peaceful beach in Elk, CA. On our way down to the water I saw an animal cross the path. It looked odd, like a brownish dog, but funny-looking. I pointed it out to Jonathan and then it was gone up a side path. Just then, a woman came by and said “Did you see it? The wild cat?” It seems we saw a bobcat. It was bigger than I expected.
Beautiful view of the water from the picnic tables.
The beach has a lot of driftwood and even some tiny pieces of beach glass. There is a stream that empties into the water here, and a lagoon behind the sand bar. We saw a least sandpiper. (They are tiny.)
You can spend a lot of time trying to figure out whether the sun is coming or going, whether you are in fog, low clouds, sea mist or rain. Here’s the fog coming in:
In 30 minutes it can go from clear to socked in. But 30 minutes after that, the sun can be back out.
How many harbor seals are in this picture? Hint: There are usually more than you first notice.
Today we had a picnic at Navarro Point, where there is a wonderful bench. All along the California coastal trail we find benches with memorial plaques on them. It is a reminder of all the people who enjoyed these trails and worked to make the system possible. This one has an inscription on a small boulder in front of the bench, so your eyes fall on it as you sit and look at the ocean.
We did some binocular beachcombing. That’s when a beach is impossible to access from the bluffs (you could visit with a kayak). We check them out for interesting driftwood and abalone shells. Today’s had both. I had to restrain Jonathan from climbing down to get it for me…
I made an amazing discovery on Saturday. There used to be so many abalone that people paved their driveways with the empty shells. There is a house around the corner that is for sale where I noticed the driveway after seeing a lot of crushed abalone fragments in the street.
I went to the beach on Saturday and there were a number of people diving for abalone. I spoke to a couple who were packing up and showed me two of their three. They said it was fun and the water wasn’t as cold as you’d think (!). the man said that he saw a lot of abalone–in the hundreds–during his swim. Again, i was very surprised. I think I have to go snorkeling myself and have a look.
I somehow skipped over the most recent low tide beachcombing. The tide is not particularly low but it is fun to go out and walk along the tide line and see what’s there. We began at Jughandle State Park, walking along the rocks, and ended up on the beaches there. Low tide was around 10:20 am, so we left home around 9:30 am, early for us these days, and started our walk before low tide.
The sea was pretty rough, no boats out, but the wind wasn’t bad, and the beachcombing was excellent. I found two complete abalone shells right on the beach. Jonathan saw them from the bluff above, but he couldn’t get to the beach before me.
The freshness of the shells and the fact that they still had abalone muscle clinging to them in places strongly suggests these are poachers’ leftovers. Each shell has a chip broken off the side, as though roughly pried off the rocks. Legally obtained abalone aren’t removed from their shell on the coast. The legal tag runs through the shell and cannot be removed until the abalone is being prepared to be eaten–someone who pried the abalone out and tossed the shell in the ocean in shallow water is almost certainly a poacher.
If this wasn’t enough, we walked along the bluffs near our house in the afternoon and saw a herd of deer grazing in the field covered with fog.
We decided not to go down onto the rocks when we saw that someone had arrived before us:
Today is beautifully clear and warm, unlike the past three days that were overcast, misty with coastal fog, or both, and downright cold at one point.
We walked all over the south half of the Pt. Cabrillo State Historic Monument, taking the hiking path south from the lighthouse. It was a glorious day/walk/view.
We saw jellyfish in all the eddies–it looks like the recent round of jellies is receding. We saw cormorant chicks on a ledge huddled together as though they would never fly away. A yellow bird that may have been one thing or another–yellow birds are more difficult to identify than you’d think.
I’m puzzling over what makes a good guest. If we are all going to save water, recycle and tread lightly on the world, how are we supposed to do it?
We’re in California right now where the big issue is saving water. Should visitors try to save water when there doesn’t seem to be a water-saving shower installed in a single motel or rental unit we’ve stayed in from Mendocino to Reno, Nevada? Is it ok to take a long shower/use a lot of towels because we are away from home? (I’d say no, but it’s tempting. In a hotel you’re not charged by the gallon for water.)
When we stay in a hotel or rental place we are often on vacation, reinforcing the idea that someone else will clean up because we’re temporary visitors, and have paid for the privilege. Do we really have to recycle? What if there are no bins–do we have to carry our empty plastic containers across state lines?
In addition to hotels/motels/rentals, the most surprising place where you’re unlikely to see recycling bins is in a marina. Isn’t that a contradiction? Wouldn’t you expect people who live/vacation/play on the water to be the most conscious of pollution and related issues?
Rental properties are my current home, and I’ve been considering them particularly closely. The issues are the same: how much water to use/save (should we use the garbage disposal)? The ants were here before we arrived–they just reemerged when they smelled crumbs. Do I have to buy Raid?
At our last rental, we were asked to wash all the sheets and towels before we left–a previous tenant commented on having to do that since we are all charged a cleaning fee. Finding the right balance is not that easy, is it?
Llywindatravels 2025 