Before Kent Reservoir was created in 1953-54, Lagunitas Creek was broad “like the Russian River” as it flowed past his present home, Tocaloma resident Pat Martin, 67, told me this week.

“It was all natural flow,” he said. During the 1940s and early 1950s, runs of coho salmon passing through Tocaloma were “incredible,” Martin remarked. No one disputes this. “Thousands” of coho salmon used to migrate up the creek annually, naturalists have likewise reported. In the years since then, however, the number of local coho dropped so precipitously the species is now listed as endangered.

A coho salmon swims upstream through shallow water on its way to spawn. (Bay Nature photo)

The fry of coho salmon are born in freshwater creeks. After a year or two, the salmon in their smolt stage swim downstream to the ocean where as adults they live for one to three years. Then guided by the smell of water from the creeks where they were born, the adult salmon head back upstream to their birthplaces to spawn and die.

Pat Martin lives on Platform Bridge Road at a ranch that once belonged to his late stepfather, Louis Zanardi. Although some people blame the development of homes and dairy ranches in West Marin for at one time putting coho salmon on the verge of extinction, Martin says baloney. From what he has seen, the damage was almost entirely the result of building Peters Dam and then Seeger Dam.

In 1953-54, Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD) created Kent Reservoir by erecting Peters Dam on Lagunitas Creek. The district didn’t release water from the reservoir in the summer, Martin said, and once that began, “I could step across the creek.”

Unable to get up Lagunitas Creek to spawn until heavy rains each year, fish would get stuck in pools around Point Reyes Station’s Coast Guard housing complex. There many of them would fall prey to seals, as well as river otters and lamprey eels, Martin added, and “kids in town would snag them.”

Years ago the late game warden Al Giddings of Woodacre likewise told me about the snagging, which involves dragging a fishing line with no bait on the hook against fish in shallow water. It’s illegal in California.

In addition, without enough water in Lagunitas Creek to migrate up it for months at a time, the salmon, which by then had been living in saltwater for a year or more, sometimes developed “fin rot” from remaining too long in freshwater pools, Martin remembered.

Platform Bridge is just downstream from Nicasio Reservoir’s Seeger Dam, and earlier this month, an artist painted pictures of migrating salmon on the bridge railing. Seeger Dam, which MMWD built 53 years ago, has eliminated salmon runs in Nicasio Creek, a tributary of Lagunitas Creek.

As part of building Peters Dam, logs were left in creek channels. In addition, the Park Service planted willows along the banks of Lagunitas Creek downstream from Jewell. All this has provided shade for fry but can also create pools that lock in fish, making them easy prey for raccoons, Martin said.

For months each year following the construction of Peters Dam 60 years ago, there wasn’t enough water in the creek to sustain much wildlife other than crawfish and bullhead catfish, he said. Brine shrimp, which had been a major part of the frys’ diet, largely disappeared, and mayfly larvae became a primary source of food.

Lagunitas Creek. Its main tributaries include Larsen Creek, Devils Gulch Creek, San Geronimo Creek and, downstream from Tocaloma, Nicasio Creek. (Marin Municipal Water District photo)

But all is not lost. For the past five years, coho salmon had been making a comeback in Lagunitas Creek. Even some chinook salmon have been showing up. River otters have followed the fish as far upstream as Tocaloma. “There never was an otter in this [stretch of] creek when I was growing up,” Martin noted.

What’s making the difference? To get a permit for raising the height of Peters Dam in 1982, MMWD was temporarily ordered to release enough water from it year round to meet the needs of fish in Lagunitas Creek. That order became permanent in 1995.

Before 1982, there were fears that Lagunitas Creek was on the verge of losing all its coho. However, as MMWD’s fishery program manager Greg Andrew reported in June, last winter the coho spawning run “approached our long-term average of about 500 adults.”

A century ago, tourists from San Francisco often took the narrow-gauge train from Sausalito to Tocaloma to fish where salmon were abundant. Here a fisherman casts his line into Lagunitas Creek just downhill from the majestic Bertrand House hotel. (Copied from historic photo in the Olema Farmhouse restaurant.)

By 1889, Tocaloma “had one of the finest hotels in Marin County, the Bertrand House,” the late historian Jack Mason wrote in Point Reyes the Solemn Land. “When fire razed this establishment in 1917, it was replaced by Caesar Ronchi’s tavern.”

Mason added that “Caesar was a portly Italian tenor whose connection with the world of grand opera was as nebulous as his reputed alliance with San Francisco’s prohibition gangland.”

The late Don McIsaac, who lived across the creek from the tavern, once told me Caesar, who had somehow gotten in trouble with other bootleggers, had to leave San Francisco for his own safety. McIsaac recalled hearing Caesar’s operatic voice periodically reverberating through the canyon.

With salmon numbers improving now that MMWD is releasing enough water into Lagunitas Creek, everything had been looking good, Martin remarked. And along with the increased flows from Peters Dam, some small dams at the Inkwells and upstream have been removed.

And then came this year’s drought. At the moment, Marin County is on its way to experiencing its driest year on record, and this is taking a toll on coho in Lagunitas Creek.

Adult salmon swimming up Lagunitas Creek often use the little “side creeks” along the way for spawning grounds, and at the moment, many of these side creeks are dry. Female salmon create hollows in the gravel creekbed called redds, which is where spawning occurs and eggs are buried. Counts of redds in Lagunitas Creek and its tributaries this year have found far fewer than had been found for several years.

Some naturalists are again worrying the salmon may still be in an “extinction vortex,” to use their obscure jargon.

Martin is more straightforward. The coho salmon population, he said with a frown, is “still not stable.”

I’m using the start of the new year as an occasion to exhibit a number of wildlife photos I’ve shot around Mitchell cabin during the past three or four years. I make no pretense to having produced photographic masterpieces, for I still use a Kodak EasyShare, a primitive digital camera that’s no longer made.

Wild animals in unlikely juxtapositions, whether deliberate or serendipitous, are some of my favorite subjects, so let’s begin with a few.

Deer in particular are curious about other creatures that are not big enough to be threatening. Friendships such as that of Bambi and Thumper are not all that unusual in the real world. Indeed, I once saw a young deer trying to cozy up to a jackrabbit; the rabbit, however, retreated under a bush when the fawn got too close.

Here a blacktail doe sticks around to watch Linda Petersen’s late Havanese named Sebastian when the dog wandered down my driveway.

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The blacktail around Mitchell cabin appear particularly interested in housecats.

Here a nosy doe watches a cat on a woodpile cleaning its fur.

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Deer and housecats seem pretty much at ease around each other, somewhat in the same way that deer get along with cows and horses.

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A bit more surprising, to me at least, was seeing this doe and great blue heron hunting together in my pasture. The deer was there to dine on new clumps of green grass while the heron was there to dine on gophers. ________________________________________________________________

Some creatures, however, need encouragement to fraternize. Foxes and raccoons aren’t terribly fond of each other, but they will show up to the same feast, which in this case consisted of honey-roasted peanuts I’d scattered on the deck. __________________________________________________________________

Possums and raccoons are even less companionable under normal circumstances. If a raccoon gets too close, a possum will often bare its fangs although it’s all a bluff. But both critters will peaceably attend ecumenical dinners when honey-roasted peanuts are served. _________________________________________________________________

Possums, in fact, can be convinced to undertake almost any endeavor if the reward is honey-roasted peanuts. In one notable case, I was able to use sweet-roasted goobers to teach a possum table manners. __________________________________________________________________

One of the most popular photos I ever posted involved my using the same peanuts to encourage a bodhisattva possum along his path to enlightenment. Word of the photograph must have gotten around. For months after I posted it, one of the more-frequently Googled terms bringing people to this blog was “bodhisattvva possum.” __________________________________________________________________

Turning now to birdbaths. A towhee keeps its feathers in good condition by washing in the birdbath on the deck of Mitchell cabin. Such ablutions are why we call the these basins birdbaths. _________________________________________________________________

And, of course, many birds count on birdbaths for their source of drinking water. Here a mourning dove leaves the birdseed to a towhee for a moment while it takes several gulps. Because so much of their food is dry, these birds need regular drinks to wash it down. I place a couple of bricks in the birdbath for birds that like to stand in water. ___________________________________________________________________

Birds are not the only creatures who use the basin for bathing and as a source of drinking water. I’ve seen as many as four raccoons squeeze into the birdbath to wash their paws after eating. Here three kits balance effortlessly 15 feet above the ground on the narrow railing of my deck as they clamber in and out of the basin at night. ______________________________________________________________________

Nor do I discriminate. My birdbath also provides drinking water for any creature that can get to it. Honeybees frequently show up to drink although a few inevitably fall in.

Probably the drinkers with the worst reputation are the roof rats. These rats originated in southern Asia, and you’ll recall it was their fleas that spread the Black Death throughout Europe in the 14th Century, killing roughly half the people.

I don’t mind roof rats’ drinking from the birdbath and stealing birdseed from my deck, but I’ve periodically had to trap rats that got into my basement. The problem is their unfortunate habit of gnawing on everything chewable from paper to dishwasher drain hoses to electrical-wire insulation.

It’s really too bad they’re such nuisances because, as you can see, they’re awfully cute.

Lynn watches as the final days of 2013 come to their end.

By the way, despite complaints from the illiterati, spelling Christmas as Xmas does not amount to “leaving Christ out of Christmas.” As the American Heritage Dictionary notes, “Xmas has been used for hundreds of years in religious writing, where X is understood to represent a Greek chi, the first letter of “‘Christ.'”

Likewise, religious scholars have often spelled Christian as Xtian. Half a century ago when I took a course in Theology and Contemporary Literature at Stanford, the professor shortened the spelling even further to Xn.

No doubt thankful that they were blacktail deer and not reindeer so they wouldn’t have to drag a sleigh all over the globe on Xmas eve, two bucks graze in my fields and gaze at my camera.

Also spending a bit of the yuletide in my fields was the bobcat seen here crossing my driveway. Bobcats tend to be merciless loners, sort of like Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge.

If you recall Dickens’ 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, you know that Scrooge is transformed from his grasping, cynical ways through a series of nighttime visions:

First, he is visited by the tormented ghost of his late partner Jacob Marley, who regrets his life of avarice, for it has left him cursed to wander the earth forever, dragging the chains of his greed.

Second, he is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, who reminds Scrooge of his innocent childhood.

Lynn and I as ghosts of Christmas Just Past (right).

Third is the Ghost of Christmas Present (odd name), who shows Scrooge people enjoying Christmas as well as the meager Christmas dinner at the home of his employee Bob Cratchit, who cannot afford treatment for his chronically ill son Tiny Tim.

Fourth is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Be, who shows Scrooge the death of an unloved businessman, whose servants quickly steal his belongings while no one tends his grave.

After all this, Scrooge is terrified. He no longer rejects Christmas as “humbug.” He anonymously sends a turkey to Bob Cratchit’s family and gives his employee a raise so he can get care for Tiny Tim. A thoroughly new man, he begins treating everyone with kindness.

With 2014 beginning on Wednesday, four contrails enhanced by a lens-flare sunburst on Sunday morning heralded the coming of a new day. In the words of Tiny Tim, “God bless us, everyone.”

Winter will begin on Saturday, and the last days of fall have been mostly brisk in West Marin. Freezing temperatures at night killed a few potted plants on the deck of Mitchell cabin, and the surrounding hills were white with frost several mornings this past week.

In Inverness, where the ridge creates daylong shadows in some places, there were days when the frost never melted.

Horses munching on bunches of green grass below my persimmon tree. Although the persimmons have ripened, Lynn and I haven’t found time to pick them, so birds and raccoons have been feasting for a couple of weeks. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Five blacktail bucks in my pasture near the Giacomini stockpond. Bucks can often be seen hanging out together these days.

The sunrise Saturday a week ago was so spectacular, I had to get out of bed long enough to photograph it. ‘Twas another reminder that the world is waiting for a sunrise.

Four of the horses grazing near Mitchell cabin are wearing blankets because of the cold. (The fourth would be totally hidden were it not for its blue blanket.) The fifth horse is either hardy or unlucky enough to have an owner that can’t afford to buy it a blanket, which I doubt is the case. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

A young buck grazing outside my kitchen door.

For years many people believed (and many websites still say) that blacktails are a subspecies of mule deer, a species found from the Northwest to the deserts of the Southwest and as far east as the Dakotas. DNA tests, however, have now found mule deer to be a hybrid of female whitetail deer and blacktail bucks.

As Bruce Morris writes in Bay Nature, “All three major deer species native to North America (blacktail, whitetail, and mule) trace their ancestry back to a primordial, rabbit-size Odocoileus, which had fangs and no antlers and lived around the Arctic Circle some 10 million years ago.”

Whitetails first appeared on the East Coast about 3.5 million years ago, as this blog previously noted. DNA evidence suggests they spread south and then west, arriving in California about 1.5 million years ago.

In moving up the coast, whitetails evolved into blacktails, which resemble them in appearance and temperament. Blacktails eventually extended their range eastward, meeting up with more whitetails coming from the east. Apparently the blacktail bucks were able to horn in on the harems of their parent species. The result: mule deer.

I always feel nostalgic as fall comes to an end. It’s a time to reflect on both the past year and the passing of the years.

Having just read virtually all issues of The Point Reyes Light/Baywood Press from shortly after World War II to the present, I can understand why longtime West Marin residents think of the old days on this coast as a happier, simpler time.

American entertainment was frequently cornier while at the same time more fun.

You can share in the nostalgia by watching this goofy but clever video featuring the pop-eyed expressions of the late Jerry Colonna (right) more than half a century ago.

You’ll need to be full screen with the sound up to appreciate it. The Girl that Married Dear Old Dad (click here).

As days grow cold with still no rain, I’m starting to see more and more of my wild neighbors.

A fortnight ago when I stepped outside, a bobcat was walking nonchalantly past Mitchell cabin. Unfortunately, my camera was in the car, and by the time I retrieved it, the bobcat, hearing me, hurried off. I managed to snap only one good shot of it as it retreated under my neighbor’s fence.

A fawn warily trots past Mitchell cabin, careful to avoid becoming dinner for the bobcat.

A Golden crowned sparrow pauses for a drink at the birdbath on my deck. The Golden crowned sparrow spends its summers in northern Alaska but heads south for the winter. Its song has been described as “Three Blind Mice in a minor key.”

SUNSET WITH A CRESCENT MOON OVER INVERNESS RIDGE  In preparation for landing, please return your seats and tray tables to their upright and locked position.

Trick or treat.

I’m pining for a conifer that for 37 years stood in a row lining my driveway but which died during the dry weather. Two weeks ago, Nick Whitney of Inverness dispatched his Pacific Slope Tree crew to cut down and chip the 25-foot-high Monterey pine. It took three men all of an hour.

A young doe (left) and buck blacktail deer graze just uphill from Mitchell cabin.

Two Golden crowned sparrows and a California towhee peck birdseed off the picnic table on the deck. Periodically, some towhee can be heard knocking on a cabin window. It turns out California towhees are prone to challenging their own reflections.

BOBCAT ON THE PROWL The bobcat was back hunting in my pasture Saturday. Bobcats’ favorite prey are rabbits and hares, but they’ll eat anything from insects to rodents to deer. Adult bobcats range in size from 2 to 3.5 feet long and have been clocked at up to 34 miles per hour.

There’s good news for California’s bobcats.

California legislators passed the Bobcat Protection Act of 2013 last September, and Governor Jerry Brown signed it into law Oct. 11. The bill, AB 1213, was authored by Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica).

“The Legislature,” notes the Legislative Counsel’s Digest, “finds that a rise in the demand for bobcat pelts in China and other foreign markets has resulted in a substantial increase in the number of trappers taking bobcats as well as in the number of bobcats taken for commercial purposes in California.”

As of Jan. 1, 2014, bobcat hunting and trapping will be prohibited on lands around Joshua Tree National Park. In addition, “the bill would require the [California Fish and Game] Commission to amend its regulations to prohibit the trapping of bobcats adjacent to the boundaries of each national or state park and national monument or wildlife refuge in which bobcat trapping is prohibited.”

“Body gripping traps are already illegal in California,” The San Francisco Chronicle reported in March, “so the bill would ban the use of wire mesh cages that trappers generally bait with cat food or carrion to lure the cats inside, causing the door to close.”

Equally important, the Fish and Game Commission commencing on Jan. 1, 2016, must “consider whether to prohibit bobcat trapping within, and adjacent to, preserves, state conservancies, and any other public or private conservation areas identified to the commission by the public as warranting protection,” the Legislative Counsel’s Digest notes.

“The commission, as necessary, shall amend its regulations… to prohibit bobcat trapping in any area determined by the commission to warrant protection.” The Digest adds that the Fish and Game Commission “may impose additional requirements, restrictions, or prohibitions related to the taking of bobcats, including a complete prohibition on the trapping of bobcats.”

When I was a student at Stanford, I once received an ominous message in the mail. Scrawled on the back of an otherwise blank postcard were the words: “THE FALL IS IN FOR YOU.”

What was the threat all about? I had no idea. Ten minutes went by before I remembered trying to buy a copy of Albert Camus’ novel The Fall at Kepler’s Books more than a month earlier. The bookstore had been sold out but offered to order a copy for me. Apparently it had finally come in.

Fall colors along the driveway to Heidrun Meadery in Point Reyes Station Sunday.

Fall is a gaily colored but bittersweet season. Its foliage is beautiful, but it also heralds the coming of winter. Perhaps because of this dichotomy, Fall has always had particular significance for me.

The first poem I ever wrote concerned Fall. My second-grade teacher assigned our class to write a poem about Autumn, and I came up with: “Autumn is the same as Fall. Autumn should not come at all, for when it’s Fall it is a rule all of us go back to school.” No doubt the teacher was offended.

Cows graze on the Dolcini Ranch at Four Corners north of Nicasio Square Sunday.

West Marin in Fall may not be able to match the colors in New England, but it nonetheless has its own share of spectacular countryside.

Canada geese on Nicasio Reservoir across Nicasio Valley Road from the Dolcini Ranch.

Marin Municipal Water District in 1961 erected Seeger Dam on Nicasio Creek, creating Nicasio Reservoir. The reservoir inundated part of the old Nicasio Valley Road, including this bridge, so a new alignment was built to the east.

MMWD’s seven reservoirs collectively are currently at 64 percent of capacity compared to 75 percent at this date last year. Sixty-six percent is average. Nicasio Reservoir looks especially low now that the old bridge has reemerged.

Even the centerline of the old Nicasio Valley Road is now visible on the reservoir’s bottom.

A stand of colorful trees between the reservoir and the Nicasio School campus.

A short distance further south lies Nicasio Vally Farms’ Pumpkin Patch, seen here on Monday. Every harvest season, especially on Saturdays and Sundays, hundreds of families pick through the crop looking for squash to carve into jack-o’-lanterns.

Horses just south of Nicasio Square seem quite blasé about the splendor at their stable.

A tree in the redwoods still further south catches a ray of sunlight while vines of poison oak frame the scene in red.

Fog begins to roll in off the ocean Sunday as the afternoon turns to dusk at Nicasio Reservoir.

A gaggle of geese take flight, probably to flap over Mitchell cabin on their evening commute to Point Reyes.

Because of Fall’s significance for me, this year as always I assembled a cornucopia in Mitchell cabin. It’s a symbol of the bounty of the harvest, and may you too be blessed with the horn of plenty this harvest season.

Saturday morning I got a call from my neighbor Jay Haas, who told me, “If you’ve been wondering about all the vultures around here for the past day, there’s a dead deer on your side of our [common] fence. I thought you might want to snap a photo.”

I’d been over the hill all day Friday and hadn’t seen the buzzards, I replied, but I immediately went down to the fence to take some pictures. (Warning: three of the following photos are fairly grim.)

It wasn’t hard to figure out where the dead deer was. The first thing I saw was this buzzard sitting on a fence post warming itself in the morning sun and looking like the imperial eagle on Kaiser Wilhelm’s banner.

Most of the flesh, hair, and internal organs of the deer, a one- or two-year-old blacktail buck, had already been stripped from its skeleton. The bones, ears, antlers, and the hair on its head were about all that remained. There was no way to readily tell how it had died: killed by a predator, injured in traffic, wounded by a hunter, or weakened by disease.

By now the buzzards were circling overhead again, waiting for me to absent myself so they could carry on eating carrion.

Buzzard, by the way, is American English for vulture. My ornithologist friends periodically tell me I should be calling the birds vultures. Buzzard refers to a buteo hawk, they insist, not a vulture.

But that’s not what the dictionary says. My American Heritage Dictionary defines buzzard as “any of various North American vultures, such as the turkey vulture.”

The use of buzzard to mean buteo hawk, the dictionary adds, is “chiefly British,” and I don’t live in England. I live in the American West, and when a fellow here calls a disreputable man an old buzzard, he sure as hell doesn’t mean an old buteo hawk. He means an old carrion eater.

Two buzzards keep an eye on the carcass as two others strip some remaining bits of meat from the skeleton.

Buzzards aren’t the only creatures, of course, that dine on carrion, and it wasn’t obvious who had eaten most of the deer.

Foxes, raccoons, and coyotes eat roadkill and other dead animals.

Mountain lions will also eat carrion when extremely hungry but normally prefer fresh meat.

Smaller carrion eaters often start with the eyes and anus because they provide easy access to the rest of the body. These holes also open passages for flies.

The role of carcasses in a fly’s lifecycle is remarkable. The average lifespan of houseflies is only three weeks, but females can lay 900 eggs in that brief period. The eggs are laid in whatever the flies are feeding on, and within a day, the first larvae (also called maggots) hatch out. It takes less than two days for the maggots to double in size, forcing them to molt and shed their exoskeletons.

After continuing to grow, and molting two more times, the worm-like maggots dig deeper into their food supply and begin their pupa stage. The pupa develops a hard shell and inside it the appendages of an adult fly. To free itself from the shell, however, requires a strange ability. The pupa grows a bump on its head which it uses to break through the shell, after which the bump is absorbed back into the fly’s head. From a newly laid egg to an adult fly on the wing takes a week to 10 days in warm weather.

Before long five buzzards were perched on fence posts, watching two others tearing away at the carcass.

Sunday morning, I decided to take another look at the skeleton and was startled by what I saw. During the night, the buck had been dragged 10 feet uphill from the fence. Now who did that? Certainly not a buzzard, fox, or raccoon. Even stripped of most of its flesh, the skeleton was still fairly heavy.

I know of only two wild animals hereabouts with the strength to drag that much weight even a short distance: a mountain lion and a coyote. Although mountain lion tracks have been found near Mitchell cabin, there certainly aren’t many cougars hereabouts. Nor could I imagine a mountain lion going to the trouble of dragging around a skeleton that didn’t have much meat on it.

That would seem to leave one of the local coyotes as the most likely suspect. Coyotes, like mountain lions, sometimes drag their dinner to places where they can eat in private, but this coyote apparently gave up after only a few feet.

I called Jay back and asked if he had heard any coyotes howling Saturday night. He hadn’t but was as surprised as I that the skeleton had been moved.

The cause of the young buck’s death remains a sad mystery. The full variety of critters that ate its carcass is likewise a mystery. But who dragged its skeleton uphill is the biggest mystery of all.

Skunks are crepuscular, which means they hunt at twilight and daybreak, and last Wednesday as the sun was going down, a lone skunk showed up just outside Mitchell cabin. Except during the mating season, skunks are solitary critters, so its being alone was no surprise. The surprise was seeing one at all. It had been years since a skunk had been out in the open around the cabin, and it was sort of a treat to see one despite skunks’ stinking reputation.

It’s not unusual to smell a skunk hereabouts, of course; this is the countryside. And occasionally I’ll spot a dead skunk on Highway 1. Skunks have terrible eyesight and can see only about 10 feet, which is why they are so vulnerable on roadways.

A skunk on the hunt.

Skunks are omnivorous. They eat plants, grasses, and berries at this time of year, as well as insects, earthworms, salamanders, frogs, lizards, carrion, and birds’ eggs whenever they can find them.

They are a major predator of honeybees because their thick fur protects them from stings when they attack hives to eat bees, not honey.

This skunk seemed to be looking for small rodents, such as moles or voles, and periodically dug furiously in various holes it came across. The creature’s strong, short legs and long front claws are ideal for burrowing.

Skunks mate in the early spring and their young are born about two months later. Blind and deaf when first born, kits open their eyes after three weeks and are weaned in about two months. The kits stay with their mother for about a year, which is a long time for a skunk. Their typical lifespan in the wild is only three to six years.

At times the skunk was almost vertical as it dug into the ground. It couldn’t see me when it was in this position, but I wasn’t about to pull its tail.

Skunks produce their foul-smelling fluid in anal scent glands to drive off predators, of course, and they can spray it up to 10 feet with accuracy.

Skunks are sparing with their spray, however, for they have only enough for about half a dozen blasts, and it takes roughly 10 days to rebuild their supply. So rather than relying on repeated spraying to drive off predators, they count on their distinctive black and white coloring to act as a warning. Nonetheless, if a skunk raises its tail, stamps its feet, and hisses, back off quickly, for it is about to spray.

Point Reyes Station naturalist Jules Evens writes in The Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula that skunks are sometimes eaten by mountain lions. I wonder how cougars avoid being sprayed. Great horned owls also eat skunks, but that’s easier to understand since the owls have a very poor sense of smell.

Skunk meandering at sunset.

So what do you do if you, your dog, or your cat gets sprayed? Despite the old wives’ tale, tomato juice will not eliminate the smell. It merely cloaks it slightly. Humans and pets both need thorough baths to get rid of the stench.

Bathing dogs is not always easy, and bathing cats can be comparable to the battle for Damascus. Moreover, you probably will need special pet shampoos and soaps, which are usually available only from veterinarians.

It is common for skunks to dig holes in backyards and lawns, much to the annoyance of some homeowners.

In the mid-1990s, the Marin Major Crimes Taskforce raided a marijuana patch on the south side of the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road about a mile east of Highway 1. Pot is reputed to have a skunk-like smell, and soon after the raid, I began noticing a skunky smell whenever I drove through the area. Evidently there was a second patch somewhere in the vicinity.

Almost two weeks went by before I spotted a dead skunk in a ditch beside the road and figured out where the smell was coming from. It made me wonder how often cops prepare for pot raids but find only dead skunks.

In the Deep South, skunks are often referred to as polecats while in Latin America they are called zorrillos (meaning little foxes).

Skunks have suffered from bad press for centuries. Even Charles Darwin dismissed skunks as “odious animals” in The Voyage of the Beagle published in 1839. However, when Looney Tunes in 1945 debuted a Parisian skunk named Pepé Le Pew, the creature’s reputation began to evolve from stinky to comic. Click here for a bit of post-war nostalgia.

Struggling to breathe, a juvenile fin whale washed ashore at Stinson Beach early Monday. The 42-foot-long male weighed roughly 11 tons.

The whale appeared to have taken a beating thrashing around in shallow water. There was also trauma to its right side, which could have come from colliding with a ship. That’s been known to happen here. The fin whale’s only natural enemy is the killer whale (i.e. orca). Photos by Lynn Axelrod

The California Marine Mammal Center based on the Marin Headlands handled the scientific aspects of the death. After a volunteer at 7 a.m. reported a beached whale was dying, the center dispatched a veterinary team to investigate.

The National Park Service had managed to turn the whale so that it was headed back out to sea, but the whale was already dead by the time the veterinary team arrived around 9 a.m.

After the whale died, a Park Service lifeguard tied a cord around the whale’s tail so that it could be dragged onto the beach with a backhoe.

The whale proved to be too heavy, however, and the line snapped the first time the Park Service tried to pull the corpse ashore.

“The veterinary team has since performed a necropsy (animal autopsy) to try to determine the cause of death,” the center reported later in the day. “Once the whale was rolled over, the Marine Mammal Center’s director of veterinary science, Dr. Shawn Johnson, discovered trauma to the sternum area and internal hemorrhaging around the heart.

“In addition, air [bubbles were] present in the subcutaneous tissue, indicative of trauma.” However, the center added, “There were no broken bones discovered.”

The severe trauma to the whale’s right side was found upon further examination.

Numerous radio stations, several television crews, and a number of newspaper reporters and photographers massed on the beach to cover the fin whale’s death. It was the second in a year in West Marin waters. A 47-foot-long fin whale washed ashore at Point Reyes last year after having been struck by a ship.

“Fin whales are the second largest marine mammal on earth, next to blue whales, and belong to the family of baleen whales,” the Marine Mammal Center wrote on its website.

Unfortunately, fin whales are on the federal list of endangered species, and the death of this young leviathan upset many observers. It brought tears to the eyes of my partner, Lynn Axelrod, who covered the sad event for The West Marin Citizen.

The young victim with the town of Stinson Beach in the background.

Even before it began to decay, the whale’s corpse was giving the area a fishy odor. After the whale was cut up by Mammal Center staff, the Park Service buried it eight feet deep further up the beach. Microbes in the sand will cause the fat and tissue to decompose but leave the bones intact.

This was only the latest of many whale burials at the beach. Some 31 whales have become stranded on Stinson Beach in the past 34 years, and even in death they are covered by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Unless one has a permit, it is illegal to disturb the bones.

The Marine Mammal Center on Tuesday reported, “All we can determine at this stage is that the animal appears to have suffered blunt trauma which either caused, or likely contributed to, its death.

“The cause of that trauma is unknown at this time. Additional testing [on blubber from the whale] will potentially reveal other findings.”

Consider this a dining review for the benefit of wildlife in Point Reyes Station.

The Pine Cone Diner.

A Western gray squirrel carries a pine cone in its teeth as it jumps from limb to limb in a Monterey pine next to Mitchell cabin. West Marin’s squirrels are easy to spot but hard to photograph. In the time it takes to raise a camera to my eye, they often bound away to a new location.

Squirrels gnaw off the scales of pine cones while the cones are still green in order to eat the pine seeds underneath.

Sometime ago it became obvious from the small, well-gnawed pine cones we were finding on the walk and decks at Mitchell cabin that once again a squirrel is a habitué of one tree in particular. It’s fun to have the squirrel around, but having the remains of cones and seeds continually under foot is a nuisance.

Also found below pines at the cabin are limb tips a squirrel has gnawed off. Squirrels like to feed on pine trees’ cambium layer, which is immediately under the bark. The bark that’s softest and easiest to gnaw through is at the narrow ends of growing limbs, resulting in squirrels forever gnawing off the ends.

Were this the Yuletide, a few of the tips that fell in the past two weeks would have been big enough to serve as small Christmas trees. One was more than four feet long.

A ruby-throated hummingbird approaches a favorite flower on the deck. In normal flight, a hummingbird’s wings beat around 80 times per second, but in dives performed during courtship, they may reach 200 flaps per second.

The same hummingbird sucks nectar from a blossom.

Hummingbirds are able to hover in one place by flapping their wings in a horizontal figure 8.

A tri-colored blackbird swoops in for a landing, pushing aside other blackbirds, which are pecking birdseed off the deck railing. The tri-colored blackbird’s yellow patch on its wing distinguishes it from a red-winged blackbird.

The flash from the camera is reflected in the fox’s eyes, but the vixen appears oblivious to the burst of light. Photo by Lynn Axelrod

A gray fox heads toward the kitchen door at Mitchell cabin after dark, hoping to be handed a slice of bread. A couple of days later, Lynn saw the vixen jump onto a deck chair and then onto the railing where a mourning dove was sitting, but the bird took flight just in time to escape.

Raccoons likewise fail to react to the camera’s flashes. They too are far more interested in bread. Photo by Lynn Axelrod

An earlier posting describing how animals’ eyes react to light notes, among other things, that wildlife including birds do not usually show any reaction to sporadic flashes, even those directly in their faces,but a quick succession of flashes gets their attention.

A black tailed buck shows the grace of a dancer as he looks up from grazing next to Mitchell cabin.

This deer seems to have marked off my fields as his, for no other bucks have been coming around recently although a fawn and a couple of does are frequent visitors.

If you happen to be a squirrel, hummingbird, blackbird, fox, raccoon, or deer, Mitchell cabin offers great food at no charge. But look out for the fox if you’re smaller than she is.