The Albany Bulb — long my favorite Bay Area example of decay and rebirth — is an artificial peninsula, created from years of dumping construction refuse into this part of the Bay. When the dumping stopped, nature took over.
Life Beneath a Water Lily
A water lily leaf in its imperfection . . . its asymmetry . . . its blemishes . . . the leaf detritus and pebbles collected at its core. In the family Nymphaeaceae, this — one of many species of water lilies — lives in the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden. Its underwater stems provide cover…
An American Bullfrog in Berkeley
I don’t usually ignore visual anomalies. They bring me to interesting things. On this Berkeley day, something seemed out of place — that nagging oddity in my periphery. I turned and looked closer in the mud. Sure enough, there was an unusual outline in the creek bed. As quickly as I noticed the frog, it…
Refracted Light, Arcs and Rainbows – Over SF
I’m not a big fan of Descartes. In spite of his genius and complexity, he held some mechanisticviews toward nature and non-human animals. But I’ll give him some love for this explanation of rainbowsI recently read at the UCAR website. He simplified the study of a rainbow to one rain droplet — and how light refracts…
Attack of the Giant Fish People
I saw these gigantic creatures slithering through the shallows — whipping up mud with each slap of the tail. They looked like radioactive versions of pond koi, ranging from about two to four feet long. And where I was, it was just me and and wind and the sound of their slither, evoking the Creature…
The Art in Bull Kelp
I never appreciated kelp until, 1) I first saw this particular monster of a kelp, and 2) I saw close-ups of kelp shot by better nature photographers than I — capturing the golden palette of this gargantuan plant.
Encounters With [the Elusive] California Beach Hopper
California Beach Hopper or Megalorchestia californiana As fleas go, they’re giants. Not giants in the sense of Bikini-Atoll-nuclear-mutant-gone-bad giants. But by flea standards, they’re positively huge — about 1 inch long. That’s probably because they’re not parasitic dog or cat fleas, but rather, amphipods — shrimp-like creatures who dine on organic matter at the outer…
Marine Mammal Viewing — From a Distance
Hugh and I had another wildlife harassment incident this past week with a family on the Mendocino coast. We hiked over an unpopulated bluff and saw a mom and kids chasing a young sea lion across the rocks for a photo op. Their actions were forcing the young animal away from her resting spot, as…
Wasp Art
Wasp Nest – ©ingridtaylar I didn’t see it this way through the viewfinder — the aquarelle tone and texture of this wasp nest, clutching the painted boards. (Just as I didn’t see the pixie faceof a blue damselfly I’d been shooting over a pond — until I offloaded those giant orbs-for-eyes onto my Mac.) I…
Splendor in the Low Tide
An homage to Warren and Natalie — in title alone. There’s photographic magic in the sun rising over a super-low tide. At the point where dawn meets a -2.0, the strange, the stunning, the predictable and the chaotic all converge on that plane of tide pools, mudflats, and beach hopper burrows. One of my favorite…
