Yesterday was a loooooong day. I got up before before 7 in readiness for a final trip out to Hayward's Shore (South Bay area), helping Christina and co. to survey and collect hybrid cordgrass seedlings. The site was surprisingly devoid of seedlings compared with earlier in the year (I only managed to locate 25 in my survey area compared with over 200 last month at nearby Robert's Landing). This may suggest that recruitment is limited not by reproductive output, but by a seedling's ability to endure the local environmental conditions. Since the majority of seeds produced are hybrids, and many hybrid clones have a greater tolerance to environmental extremes, things aren't looking so good for the native...
Within an hour of returning to Davis, I found myself back on the road with Marcel for an evening's owling mission along Mosquito Ridge Road, Placer County. In spite of a couple of obstacles (Marcel forgot his flashlight and I was not appropriately dressed for the temperature, which plunged down to 5 degrees an hour after sunset), we were successful in hearing 3 Saw-whet Owls, and managed a brief flight view of our target bird, Flammulated Owl. 3 Gray Foxes in the road were also nice, while some unidentified hoarse vocalisations may have emanated from a young Spotted Owl. After last night's thunderclouds, I should probably have got up to check for Eastern vagrants this morning, but having arrived home somewhat after 2am, that wasn't going to happen!
Posted by rjhall at June 9, 2004 7:07 PM