Cat Tracks, Tide Pools, and Fog Banks

Cat tracks!?

On Monday evening Dylan, Danny and I went for a evening/full moon hike up near the fire road behind the Bolinas Water Authority and storage tanks. it was a beautiful sunset complete with a fog bank that rolled into Bolinas lagoon and seemed to make our little West Marin hamlet an island. Up the road a bit i started to find and witness some really great imprints of animal tracks. Coyote and a fairly large cat were the culprits, with a few badger like tracks a little further up the road where the roads diverged at a grassy clearing with badger dig sites. the photo below is a perfect example of side by side dog and cat tracks! you can see from the dog print on the left (or coyote most likely) the clear X that is made in the middle of the paw. the dog print is actually facing south, while the cat print on the right is facing up or walking north if the top of the photo is North (which in reality it actually is). it was a little spooky since the three of us were walking into the wooded ridge, all the while following large big cat prints. Mountain Lion? i cannot put it out of my head that it is exactly what we were tracking.

coyote on the left, big cat on the right

Bolinas lagoon covered in fog.

On another note and the next day, I had the Brothers Johnny and Apollo again and this time we went to the beach with a beautiful negative tide. the tide pulls were splendid and Olivia found one of my very favorite little gastropod marine friends, the Nudibranch! this brightly colored gastropod known as the Opalescent Nudibranch (or Hermissenda crassicornis) sheds its shell after is larval stage, and is one of the main reasons i fell in love with the ocean and marine biology. with over 3,000 species these little buggers come in so many shapes and colors.

Opalescent Nudibranch!

Johnny and Apollo play at the beach

beautiful evening and fog

Danny Vitali in the grasses taking photos.

 a final note about the prints, my finger is around 4 inches... gives an idea on how large the cat. BUT, its not too much bigger then the coyote, and so it very well could be a bob cat. there were much larger cat prints on this trail bigger then the length of my finger....

nice kitty...