Jul-Sep 2009
Our summer 2009 issue features some of our area’s lesser-known habitats and creatures. From the vantage points of kite-mounted cameras and field microscopes, two researchers study and record beautiful images of the diversity of life in a ditch at the South Bay salt ponds. In this issue we also discover by kayak the less-visited middle reach of the Russian River and learn some of the secrets of bats, tarweeds, and the tiny gall wasps that inhabit the ecosystem created by an oak tree. Cover image by Stephen Joseph, stephenjosephphoto.com.
Issue Contents
Not all print articles and images appear online immediately.
Photo by Cris Benton.
Feature
text and photos by Cris Benton and Wayne Lanier
Using kite-mounted cameras and field microscopes, an architecture professor and a retired microbiologist have uncovered surprising diversity in an unassuming ditch next to a railroad grade that cuts across the South Bay salt ponds near Alviso. From vivid oranges laced with bird tracks to bright greens bubbling with oxygen exhaled by cyanobacteria, there's complexity and wonder waiting at the Weep, from several hundred feet in the air down to the microscopic level.
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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East Bay Parks Feature
by Ron Russo
Standing sentinel near the highest point in the East Bay Regional Park District, an ancient blue oak is our window into a spectrum of life in the orbit of one grand tree. From passing raptors and nesting acorn woodpeckers and browsing deer, we zoom in to the strange and colorful world of the gall wasps. These tiny insects are first-rate engineers, manipulating their host trees into creating peculiar shelters for the wasps' larvae, in often-fanciful shapes reminiscent of sea urchins, dunce caps, and more.
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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Sidebar
by Daniel McGlynn
About one-eighth of California's land area is covered in oak woodlands. Despite that vast acreage, it's hard to be an oak in California. Threats to oak survival include the effects of fire management, increased pressure from booming rodent and deer populations, disease, drought, competition from exotic plants, and the largest threat of all, development...
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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Stream, Forest, and Shadow, pastel, 10" x 25", painting by Connie Smith Siegel
Literary in Nature
essay by Darla Hillard
Memories of the 1930s in what is now Samuel P. Taylor State Park.
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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Literary in Nature
poem by Rachel Dilworth
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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On the Trail
by Sarah Sweedler
Put your boat or raft in the river above Healdsburg and follow a wild, green thread flowing through an altered landscape.
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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On the Trail
by Linnea Williams
A few miles south of Half Moon Bay, Cowell Ranch State Beach features some of the area's best tidepools for exploring. A vast expanse of rocky habitat is uncovered at low tide, leaving sea anemones, starfish, crabs, limpets, and other marine wildlife exposed for the curious to discover.
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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Photo by Daniel McGlynn
On the Trail
by Daniel McGlynn
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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Photo by Dan Hill
On the Trail
by Ann Sieck
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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Signs of the Season
by Judith Larner Lowry
Wake up and smell the tarweeds, the scent of summer.
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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Photo by Cynthia Vanderlip.
Conservation in Action
by Sue Rosenthal
An innovative program uses albatrosses as “winged ambassadors” to help middle school students learn about the distant consequences of plastics that end up in our ocean.
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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Photo (c) Merlin D. Tuttle, Bat Conservation International, www.batcon.org.
Families Afield
by Cat Taylor
Spend a night out as a bat and you'll be amazed by these critters' abilities to "see" in the dark and fly nimbly as they catch fast-flying bugs.
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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Ask the Naturalist
by Michael Ellis
Which bird that migrates to or through the Bay Area travels the farthest to get here from its breeding grounds?
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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Ask the Naturalist
by Jack Laws
Find out how a little worm ties together the lives, and deaths, of several ocean animals, from sea otters to surf scoters to the mole crabs that live in great numbers in the sands of many beaches.
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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Photo courtesy NPS.
Letter from the Publisher
by David Loeb
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
Published July 01, 2009
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Photo courtesy GGNRA.
by Aleta George
Remembering parks visionary Brian O’Neill, studying exotic jellies in the bay, seeking creeks, counting gulls, and touring the new home of the Marine Mammal Center...
From the Jul-Sep 2009 issue
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