Here’s hoping you had a happy US Thanksgiving this past fourth Thursday of November. My family in Canada celebrated that country’s Thanksgiving on Oct. 13; it’s the second Monday of October up north where the harvest comes earlier. As for my family down south in Guatemala, that long-suffering country gets no Turkey Day at all.

In Point Reyes Station, approximately 225 guests and 25 volunteers took part in the West Marin Community Thanksgiving Dinner. For the second year, the feast was held in the Dance Palace, with diners filling the main hall and most of the church space.

West Marin Community Resource Center organized the event, but numerous groups ranging from the Inverness Garden Club to the Marin County Fire Department helped with preparations. Here volunteers served a line that stretched around the room.

All fall I’ve been seeing wild turkeys along West Marin’s roads, but I hadn’t spotted any on my own property until this flock of eight hens showed up appropriately enough on the eve of Thanksgiving. Clucking contentedly, they dug small holes in my pasture before moving on.

Wild turkeys, of course, are not native to West Marin. Working with the California Department of Fish & Game, a hunting club in 1988 introduced the wild turkeys on Loma Alta Ridge, which overlooks the San Geronimo Valley. The original flock of 11 hens and three toms all came from a population that Fish & Game had established in the Napa Valley during the 1950s.

There’s not much turkey hunting in West Marin these days except by Point Reyes National Seashore staff trying to exterminate them where it can. On private lands, however, the turkeys can usually find a haven.

While on my deck enjoying the sun around 2 p.m. Saturday, I looked down and spotted something moving in the grass near the cars parked at the foot of my front steps.

After first using a pair of binoculars to confirm that the animal was a bobcat and not just a large housecat, I quickly got out my camera.

I’ve seen a bobcat hunting around my cabin before, and even shot a photo of it, but this was my first chance to photograph one at fairly close range. That was a thrill.

Although rabbit and hare are the primary fare for bobcats in other parts of the country, this member of the lynx genus also hunts small rodents, as well as insects, and even deer in some regions. Their numbers are fairly stable in most of the United States despite heavy hunting in some places.

The subspecies of bobcat common to this region is the Lynx rufus Californicus. The adult male averages three feet in length, including a 4- to 7-inch bobbed tail, and is about 15 inches tall at the shoulder.

In Point Reyes Station, which President-elect Barack Obama carried with 86.1 percent of the vote, brown hills quickly turned to green after the election.

It’s time for another installment in this blog’s occasional series Quotes Worth Saving, which, in fact, is the label on the file in which I save them. Here are a few gleaned from the press during the past three years.

SWANSEA WALES  When officials [via email] asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign [“No entry for heavy-goods vehicles. Residential site only.”], they thought the reply was what they needed.

Unfortunately, the email response [Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i’w gyfieithu.] to Swansea council said in Welsh, “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.” So that was what went up under the English version, which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket. “When they’re proofing signs, they should really use someone who speaks Welsh,” said journalist Dylan Iorwerth. BBC, Oct. 31, 2008

All official roadsigns in Wales must be bilingual, and this is hardly the first time confusion has occurred in translations:

VALE OF GLAMORGAN, WALES  Cyclists were left confused by a bilingual roadsign telling them they had problems with an inflamed bladder. The “Cyclists Dismount” sign between Penarth and Cardiff became”llid y bledren dymchwelyd” in  Welsh, literally “Bladder Inflammation Upset” The Vale of Glamorgan Council said new signs were being made. “It is possible that an online translation led to confusion between cyclists and cystitis.” BBC, Aug. 15, 2006

And there are times when despite everything being clearly written, the reader is left wondering, “What the heck was really going on?”

FRESNO  Fresno County authorities have arrested a man they say broke into the home of two farmworkers, rubbed one with spices, and whacked the other with a sausage before fleeing. The suspect, 22-year-old Antonio Vasquez of Fresno, was found hiding in a nearby field wearing only a T-shirt, boxer shorts, and socks.

The victims told deputies they awoke Saturday morning to the stranger applying spices to one of them and striking the other with an 8-inch sausage. Money allegedly stolen in the burglary was recovered. The sausage was tossed away by the fleeing suspect and eaten by a dog. Associated Press, Sept. 8, 2008

She’s no paparazzi, but San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik features a “Public Eavesdropping” item in each column. Six weeks after Italy’s most-beloved opera singer died last year, Garchik quoted a tourist in Paris remarking, “I never understood why Pavarotti was chasing Princess Diana.” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 19, 2007

West Marin provides wintering grounds for a variety of migrating birds, and one of the first to arrive each fall is the Golden-crowned sparrow.

This one showed up on the railing of my deck a couple weeks ago. Besides having a yellow stripe down the middle of its head, the Golden-crowned sparrow has a distinctive, three-note song. The best description I’ve heard of it comes from horsewoman Connie Berto: “Three Blind Mice sung in a minor key.”

Golden-crowned sparrows’ summer breeding grounds are in Alaska and British Columbia. The birds migrate south to Vancouver Island and the West Coast of the United States each winter.

Illegal migrants? I spotted these Mute swans a week ago on La Laguna, the small lake along Chileno Valley Road near Laguna School. These are part of a larger flock that included a few Trumpeter swans. Despite Mute swans’ beauty, Oregon and Washington, as well as some Midwestern and East Coast states, have begun trying to kill them off. It’s the US Interior Department’s white-deer and Drakes Bay-oyster scandals all over again: nativism masquerading as science.

As an organization called Save Our Swans notes, “In 2004 a nationwide program in the United States was announced that would reduce Mute swan populations by 85 percent, with the remaining swans to be pinioned, neutered and placed in parks. This caused an outrage by citizens and was fought in court….”

The Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service claims that Mute swans, which are smaller than Trumpeter swans, are non-native and eating up all the “native” swans’ food (mostly water plants, such as algae). But there’s no more evidence for this than there was for the Point Reyes National Seashore’s claim that white deer were out-competing blacktail deer for the park’s abundant forage.

Despite the nationwide policy of Fish and Wildlife, “the Mute Swan is protected in some states by state statute, for example, in Connecticut,” Save Our Swans reports. “Since swans eat algae, they can be very valuable in shallow bay areas, in rivers and ponds.”
Migrant swans in Chileno Valley, which was named after another group of migrants, Chilean ranchworkers.

Mute swans, moreover, are neither mute nor non-native. Save Our Swans explains that Mute swans are “circumboreal.” That is, they migrate around the far north, “including the Russian Maritimes and Kamchatka, a major staging area for millions of birds on migration to the American continent, a short distance away.”

Given their migration route, it is hardly surprising that cold weather sometimes forces migrating swans south to the Atlantic states, to the Upper Midwest, and on the West Coast as far south as California. Mute swans have been reported for centuries in what is now the United States. A 1585 scientific expedition on behalf of Sir Walter Raleigh brought back to England a detailed drawing of a Mute swan on the Atlantic shore.

In short, the Mute swan is a primarily Eurasian bird whose migration routes have always resulted in some members of the species living in the United States, where the Department of the Interior now wants to kill them off.

Meanwhile, “Trumpeter swans, native birds, have been ‘placed’ by wildlife management agencies — often in areas in which they never bred historically — to create a ‘trophy’ species for sportsmen,” Save Our Swans reports. “There has already been a trial hunting season on Trumpeter swans in the Pacific Flyway and suggested programs to expand the [current] program coast to coast.”

Like Tchaikovsky, I’ve always thought of killing swans as brutally misguided. If you agree, please check the Save Our Swans website to see how you can help stop this government-sponsored barbarity.

Just what does that gull see?

One of the odder results of Senator John McCain’s choice for a vice presidential running mate is that Americans are learning about a previously obscure but medically recognized brain disorder. The disorder, which can lead to clinical anxiety, causes sufferers to see things after they’re no longer there.

Ironically, the name of the brain disorder is Palinopsia. This is true. “You could look it up,” to quote James Thurber. The all-too-apt coincidence of names was first brought to public attention in online commentaries by Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker and Michael Daly of The New York Daily News.

For defense, the gopher snake frequently pretends to be a rattlesnake.

Snake bitten after Republicans, as well as Democrats, accused him and running mate Sarah Palin of rabble rousing that could lead to violence, Senator McCain is now trying to defuse his supporters’ fury toward opponent Barack Obama.

When a woman at a rally in Minnesota last Friday told McCain she didn’t trust Senator Obama because “he’s an Arab,” McCain responded, “No, ma’am, he’s a decent family man.”

It’s true that Obama is not Arabic. But since when are being Arabic and being “a decent family man” mutually exclusive? (Editor’s note: Less than an hour after this posting went online, Jon Stewart raised the same question on the Daily Show. In short, SparselySageAndTimely.com was out in front of the Daily Show on this issue — at least in the Pacific time zone.)

Western fence lizards come in many colors, sometimes looking almost red on their backs although males are typically blue on their bellies.

Another irony. Despite bogus claims about Senator Obama’s ancestry, if you go back enough generations, Obama through his mother is related to George Bush (11th cousins), Dick Cheney (9th cousins), two signers of the Declaration of Independence (Richard Henry Lee and his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee), a 19th century US Supreme Court justice (Edward Douglass White), and numerous other American statesmen.

To improve the public’s poor opinion of them, President Bush and Vice President Cheney may want to start stressing that they’re related to the much-more-popular senator from Illinois.

A male Western gray squirrel as seen from my bedroom window one morning two weeks ago.

I’d always thought of squirrels as basically benign creatures albeit a bit, shall we say, squirrelly. But then came a BBC report in December 2005: Russian squirrel pack ‘kills dog.‘

Quoting Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, the BBC reported; “Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park… Passersby were too late to stop the attack by black squirrels in a village in the far east….

“They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh. A pine cone shortage may have led to the squirrels to seek other food sources, although scientists are skeptical.”

Did the attack really happen? Whatever happens in Russia, to quote Winston Churchill, “is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” All I can tell you is that squirrels are omnivorous and will eat small birds, along with acorns. Moreover, Komosmolskaya Pravda reported that just a few months earlier, chipmunks had “terrorized cats” in the area.

Squirrels on this hill have plenty of pine cones to dine on, which could explain why they don’t bother to attack dogs (or cats). The squirrels, however, make their presence known in other ways. My neighbors and I are forever finding tips of pine branches lying on the ground.

Western gray squirrels (Scuirus grilseus) like to feed on pine trees’ cambium layer, which is immediately under the bark, the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management Program notes. In the process, squirrels gnaw off twigs.

One of the four species of tree squirrels in California is a particular problem for agricultural and suburban gardens, which is why Integrated Pest Management is interested in squirrels.

California’s native Douglas squirrels (found in the Sierra and on the North Coast) are seldom a problem. Native Western gray squirrels and non-native Eastern gray squirrels aren’t all that much of a problem either. “Eastern gray squirrels (Scuirus carolinensis) were originally introduced from the eastern United States into Golden Gate Park in San Francisco,” Integrated Pest Management reports. They’ve already spread out to San Joaquin and Calveras counties, and “may be expanding their range.”

By far the most problematic squirrels are “Eastern fox squirrels (Sciurus niger), Integrated Pest Management notes. They “were introduced from the eastern part of the United States and are well established in most major cities of California…. In some cities, Eastern fox squirrels have moved outward into agricultural land, especially in the southern part of the state, where they have become a pest of commercial crops.”

Although you need a state permit to kill or capture most tree squirrels in California, the same does not hold true for Eastern fox squirrels. California is a free-fire zone when it comes to these rodents, which are also known as Red fox squirrels.

Some people have theorized that Scuridae, the scientific name for the family of rodents to which squirrels and chipmunks belong, may have the same root as our word scurry.

Whatever the case, it is known that the name squirrel comes to us from squyrel in Middle English (what Chaucer spoke in the 1300s). Squyrel, in turn, came from the ancient Greek word skiouros, which not surprisingly meant squirrel.

On more than a few nights, I’ve heard coyotes around my cabin, for they typically hunt in pairs, howling and yipping back and forth to keep track of where the other one is. I’ve seen coyotes in the Point Reyes National Seashore, as well as beside Nicasio Reservoir and on Highway 1 near Campolindo Way in Point Reyes Station.

Last Thursday, however, was the first time I managed to not only see but photograph a coyote close to the house.

As it happened, last Thursday I drove Seeva Cherms, daughter of Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park, to Novato and back. As we pulled up to my cabin upon our return, Seeva spotted an animal lying in the grass just uphill from where I was parking.

“Look!” she exclaimed. “There’s a coyote!” Because it was still bright daylight, I was initially skeptical. From its color, it could have been a deer, but when the coyote stood up, there was no mistaking it.

Luckily I had my camera in the car, and as I took it out, the coyote began ambling uphill slowly, giving me a chance to shoot several photos.

There were no coyotes in West Marin for 40 years because of poisoning by sheep ranchers in northwest Marin and southern Sonoma counties. However, coyotes never disappeared from northern Sonoma County, and after the Nixon Administration banned the poison 10-80, they started spreading south and showed up here again in 1983.

Since then, coyotes have put an end to well over half the sheep ranching around Marshall, Tomales, Dillon Beach, and Valley Ford.

Coyotes, which evolved in North America two million years ago, can now be found from Alaska to Panama. In fact, their name in English is derived from coyotl, which was given to them by the Nahuatl tribe of central Mexico.

Northern coyotes are the largest, weighing up to 75 pounds and measuring more than five feet long. Coyotes have been clocked at just under 45 mph while chasing prey and can jump almost 15 feet while on the run. Interestingly, coyotes — like domestic dogs — have sweat glands on the pads of their paws. Wolves don’t. (Nor do New England coyotes, which are bigger than the coyotes around here and whose ancestry is presumed to be part wolf.)

Unlike many predators, coyotes have actually benefited from the European settlement of North America. Most significantly, the white man eliminated many of the wolves that prey on coyotes. A brief clip from the National Geographic Channel of a wolf-coyote encounter (with a happy ending) can be seen by clicking here.

Modern society has also encouraged the spread of coyotes by providing them with food sources ranging from abundant garbage to small pets. As a result, coyotes live longer in suburban and urban areas than they do in the wilds, according to a study conducted from 2000 to 2007 by Ohio State University researchers.

The researchers determined that roughly 2,000 coyotes live in the Chicago metropolitan area alone and concluded comparable populations could be found at other US cities. Two years ago, in fact, a coyote was captured in Manhattan’s Central Park.

Other than rifle-toting sheep ranchers, mountain lions are the only significant threats to coyotes in West Marin, and in the wild, coyotes can live up to 10 years.

While coyotes have been known to mate with wolves, their more common inter-species dalliances are with domestic dogs. Indeed, not too long ago, various people walking female dogs near Abbott’s Lagoon were horrified when they spotted a male coyote heading toward their pet, only to discover the guy wanted to get it on with Lassie, not devour her.

I suspect my parents’ initial inclination was to attribute the disgusting phenomenon to what they saw as the general degeneracy of the era, for it was in the early 1960s that our family began to notice more than a little filth just outside a third-floor window.

The second-floor living room of our home in the Berkeley Hills had a bay window looking out (appropriately) at San Francisco Bay, and atop the protruding window was a small, shingled roof. The view from the third floor likewise looked out at the bay but also down on the bay window’s roof, and around 1960, my parents were dismayed to notice dog-sized feces mysteriously showing up on the shingles.

I’m sorry, but there’s a line.

One night while I was away, my parents heard something banging around on a lattice that was on the same side of the house as the bay window. They investigated and with irritation discovered that a family of raccoons had taken to climbing two stories up the outside of our house to poop on the window’s small roof. Not only was this unsightly, it forced my parents to periodically string a garden hose through our house and from the third-floor window spray raccoon excrement off the roof below.

With the insouciance of youth, I was amused by the raccoons’ seemingly bizarre behavior; however, as an adult, I don’t find it quite so entertaining now that raccoons have established lofty latrines near my cabin.

As it happens, a sizable pine tree grows beside the steps leading up to my deck, and the tree has become a favorite jungle gym for this hill’s raccoons. Unfortunately, the raccoons have selected the crotches of two large limbs for latrines, and they keep coming back to leave fresh droppings on top of older droppings. Anyone going up or down my front stairs has all too good a view of these latrines, so I too must now hose the filth out of sight.

I’ve spared you the photos, but naturalists note that raccoon scat is shaped like a blunt cigar and sometimes contains bits of berries, acorns or other vegetation. However, examining it too closely may be a bad idea for several reasons.

Well, excuse me! This stall is taken.

There is, in fact, a serious side to all this because raccoon droppings often contain the parasite Baylisascaris procyonis, which can make humans and dogs extremely sick. Indeed, inhaling or ingesting eggs of the parasite can be fatal for humans although this is not common. Nonetheless, the Journal of Wildlife Diseases reports that spot checks of raccoon droppings in Indiana during 1980 found 27 percent of the scat in an urban area carried Baylisascaris procyonis eggs, as did 31 percent in a rural area.

Counter-intuitively, the danger is greatest with dried, not fresh, droppings. The veterinarian website PetEducation.com notes the parasite’s eggs must sit in the scat for three or four weeks before they become infective. It’s not a pleasant prospect and perhaps explains why some people instinctively yell “Scat!” whenever they spot a raccoon hunkering down around their homes.

Tomales again this weekend showed it’s a town that knows how to party. The 2000 census listed Tomales’ population as 371 (the third smallest of the 14 towns in West Marin, ahead of only Dillon Beach, 319, and Olema, 245). However, the few folks who live in Tomales are known for hosting notable bashes from a 200-biker Hells Angels’ barbecue in 2004 to its yearly Founders’ Day.

Although a wine-tasting booth in the town park was doing a brisk business Sunday and the beer booth sold out its entire inventory, the William Tell bar was crowded inside and out. In front of the bar, a band played, and some folks danced.

Tomales on Sunday resumed its annual Founders’ Day celebration, which includes a parade up Highway 1 through downtown followed by a picnic in the park, complete with food, beer, and wine booths. Last year the celebration couldn’t be held because the town park was in the midst of an improvement project.

The project isn’t finished yet, but already new restrooms and new playground equipment are in place. The park is bordered with a new, but rustic, fence. Using split railroad ties, volunteer Bill Jensen built a fence like those traditionally found on local sheep ranches. Stabilized with handsome retaining walls made of stone, terraces, where families now picnic and children play, have been dug into the hillside. And therein lies a story.

Because many of Tomales’ ranching families have lived there for generations and care about its history, the town maintains an ambitious Tomales Regional History Center. Syndicated cartoonist Kathryn LeMieux, who lives in Tomales, is a volunteer at the museum, as well as a former member of its board, and one day during July 2007, she received a call from contractor David Judd, who’s in charge of the park renovation.

Kathryn ought to come down to the park, he said, and “look at all the old things we’re digging up.” David said he’d have the bulldozer work elsewhere for a while to give her a chance to sift through dirt that had been moved, and Kathryn immediately became fascinated with what she found. In the top four feet of soil were old bottles, Miwok arrowheads, and broken China. A year later, Kathryn is still inspecting dirt in the park and, in fact, found obsidian from an arrowhead on Sunday.

Townspeople were captivated by the trove of archeology Kathryn (seen above with Bill Bonini) revealed in the town park on Sunday, and it was one of the highlights of Founders’ Day.

Along with dozens of arrowheads and pieces of China, Kathryn has collected numerous bottles from the beginning of the last century. She even found an automobile-dealership license plate from 1919, a year before the dealer’s home apparently was destroyed in a town fire. (Back then Tomales was considered sufficiently populous to warrant its own dealership.)

Just south of Tomales, Highway 1 runs alongside Walker Creek, and it happened that last Thursday when I drove this stretch of road, I came up behind a car that was barely moving. Looking around to see why it had slowed, I spotted two deer wading across Walker Creek. So I pulled onto the shoulder and watched. Eventually, the water got too deep for the deer, and they had to swim the last 50 feet or so, coming ashore no more than 25 yards upstream from me.

Once the site of a Miwok village called Utumia, present-day Tomales was founded by Warren Dutton, who began building settlements in the area during the 1850s. The town gained prominence in 1875 when it became a stop on the new narrow-gauge railroad, which ran from Sausalito across Marin County to Point Reyes Station and then north to Cazadero.

Before long the town was home to 11 saloons, which may have been where ebullient residents hatched an unsuccessful campaign to have Tomales named the countyseat despite its remote location

Tomales, however, is a town that has had to keep rebuilding itself, for it has been struck by one disaster after another. Town fires in 1877, 1891, and 1898 each destroyed numerous buildings, as did the 1906 earthquake and yet another town fire in 1920. In 1930, the last train pulled out of town, just as Prohibition and the Great Depression were also dealing Tomales economic blows.

Tomales’ population today is about 40 percent below its peak a century ago, and its largest employer is merely good old Tomales High. Nonetheless, townspeople have persevered, and the Founders’ Day crowd sounded almost giddy as they admired the work being done (much of it by volunteers) at their park — and the antiquities being unearthed.

A California prionus beetle. Sounds sort of like a fuel-efficient car made jointly by Toyota and Volkswagen, doesn’t it?

I found this huge beetle (more than two inches long) near my woodstove a couple of weeks ago, and Inverness Park biologist Russell Ridge identified it for me. The prionus beetle is usually described as a “boring insect,” not because it’s mundane but because its larvae feed on the roots of trees, often killing them. The larvae can reach four inches long and be as big around as your finger.

Among the trees they attack are oaks, populars, black walnut, some fruit trees, and some conifers. Their range extends from Central California to Alaska.

Western gray squirrels are common sights on this hill, but they disappear so fast when they see a human that it took me months of trying before I managed to photograph one.

Except in stands of redwoods, gray squirrels can be found in trees throughout Marin County. This one is on my deck.

Gray squirrels breed in early spring and have a gestation period of approximately two months. Although females typically give birth in hollow trees or other hidden spots, they move their young into nests of leaves and twigs (called dreys) within a few days.

Dreys such as this one on the property of neighbors George Stamoulis and Carol Waxman are often lined with grass or moss.

In late fall and early winter, squirrels hide acorns in a variety of places to feed on during lean months. However, not all the hidden acorns are recovered, and gray squirrels are often credited with inadvertently planting oaks around the West.

Young raccoons up a tree.

These kits are about four months old, and every night their mother leads them on hunts around my cabin. Because I see them only after dark, I have to use a flash to photograph them. The raccoons don’t seem to notice the flashes, but my results nonetheless have been uneven.

For most of my 35 years as a newspaper man, I shot photos with film, and I’m still learning the fine points of digital photography.

In recent months, two problems in particular been been bugging me: white specks caused by shooting through windows and digital “noise,” tiny dots of color where there should be none.

Fortunately, I’ve become friends with a San Francisco photography student, Jasper Sanidad (right), who contributes to The Point Reyes Light, and he is now my coach.

For example, when I had been photographing nocturnal creatures, I’d usually tried to remain unseen behind closed windows, but Jasper noted that dirt on the windows was a large part of my problem.

In addition, he told me, I’d been depending too much on my camera’s zoom to show the critters up close.

Because my flash was too far from the animals, Jasper explained, my camera wasn’t picking up enough color detail, and the noise in my photos resulted from the digital system trying to provide what wasn’t there.

What I needed to do, he added, was to get closer to the creatures myself and keep my zoom at a wide angle. That would eliminate the noise.

As it’s turned out, Jasper was right, but what a surprise! I was able to shoot my nightly raccoons at close range, I discovered, mainly because they walked right in the kitchen door when I left it open to avoid shooting through the glass.

Notwithstanding the crisp images I could get by having the raccoons so close at hand, I didn’t really want them in the house. So I threw some bread out the door, and they went back outside to get it.