Santa Cruz

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The Osprey’s Nest

One of my neighbors knew I was struck with the affliction of birding and told me about the osprey’s nest on top of a Douglas-fir along the railroad about a 30 minute hike up river from my cabin.

After work on Friday, I hiked out of Paradise Park via the fire road and scrambled up a deer trail to the even grade of the railroad. This railroad is now operated by the Santa Cruz, Big Trees and Pacific Railway and takes tourists from Felton to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. At one time the railroad went over the Santa Cruz Mountains to Los Gatos but now does not go very far beyond Felton. I have hiked this railroad since my youth and it had been a few years since I played hopscotch on railway ties up the San Lorenzo Valley.

Walking along this rustic railroad always feels like I’m participating in a scene from Stand By Me on a quest to find a dead body. But in this case I was in search of a big bunch of sticks on top of a fir, high above the San Lorenzo River.

I kept one eye on the rails and one on the trees off to my right. My neighbor had given me good directions to the nest and when I was 30 minutes out of Paradise, I thought that maybe I had passed the nest. But how could I miss it? So I continued hiking upstream.

Ten minutes later the osprey nest appeared across the river between a break in the redwoods and firs. I put bins on the nest and could not detect any occupants. But osprey nests are deep and the osprey could be laying low. The only sign of life were the acorn woodpeckers that looked to have used the fir as their granary tree, their acorn larder, for years.

I was at a point in the line where the railroad curves gracefully over a curved viaduct. The concrete arched bridge was build by the Southern Pacific Railroad in March of 1905 and spans Coon Gulch. At this point the San Lorenzo River takes a turn and you can get an amazing view upstream. This point in the line is known as Inspiration Point.

It didn’t take long to see signs of life. An osprey flew in and briefly alighted on the nest. Bingo! The nest is occupied after all. The unseen osprey, presumedly sitting on eggs, sat up in the nest and became visable.

The osprey that flew in could have been the male who is responsible for bringing fish to the nest while the female does most of the incubating of the two to three eggs. The male perched near the nest on a Doug-fir and preened.

First sign of life at the osprey’s nest. Perhaps the male dropping off fish.

I stood by the railside and sketched the nest. On the left side of the spread is my field sketch (first in pencil then in dark sepia pen) of the Douglas-fir crowned by the osprey nest. The osprey perched on the right was drawn from a field photo I took of the presumed male. The title and text were added back at the cabin. In the end, I decided to create a spread that is almost monochromatic. I resisted the urge to paint in the sky because I didn’t want anything to distract from the form of the Doug-fir and nest.

The osprey doing a little housekeeping at the nest. This is presumedly the female who does most of the incubation of the eggs. Both sexes build the nest. A hiker who stopped to look at the nest told me that the nest had been there for past two or three years.
Ospreys reuse their nests each breeding season. A lot of work has gone into this nest over the past two or three seasons.
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Mothers

On Mother’s Day I saw the merganser ducklings for the first time.

I was on Washington Way, a footpath that runs parallel to the San Lorenzo River. There was the female, in a cloud of young ones. The common merganser ducklings where actively diving and foraging so it was hard to get an accurate count but I estimated I counted 12 heads.

Common merganser nests in cavities near water and females may lay 6 to 13 eggs. The hatchlings may stay in the nest for a day and then the downy young jump out of the nesting cavity and they immediately can swim and hunt for themselves. No failures to launch in the merganser world.

The next day, on my daily walk, I saw the wood duck family from Washington Way. They were foraging on Middle Beach. The group included two adult males, a female, and three ducklings.

The wood ducks with two of their three ducklings. The ducklings were actively foraging on their own on Middle Beach.
The male wood duck is considered to be the most beautiful duck in North America, if not the world. There’s a lot going on with this duck.

Later that day, at about four in the afternoon there was a late spring rain. I stood at the backdoor, looking out past the deck and the trees towards the river and I wondered how the wood duck ducklings were handling their first rain.

So I did want I always did when I am inspired by the natural world: I wrote a poem and did a sketch. What else should I have done? (As Mary Oliver would have asked).

Mother

To the three wood
duck ducklings on
the river, this was
their first rain.

Did it seem odd
to them that it
was wet from above
as well as below?

Did they wonder
if the whole world
was river?

I imagine that
before they got
lost in thought
(as much as ducks
get lost in thought)

mother presented
her downy breast
and they sought shelter
before an answer came.

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The Founders Tree

“The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.” – John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley

Over the past 15 years I have spent much time sketching around my cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains among the redwoods, douglas-firs, big leaf maples, and bay laurels. I have sketched all of the trees but one of these stands above the others. That would be Sequoia sempervirens, the coast redwood.

I have always loved sketching coast redwoods and I have sketched them many times and I understand their visual language. For one, they are not too hard to sketch, a straight trunk that reaches up to the sky like a giant sundial. These trees are so massive that when I sketch them, I only seem to capture a small part of them as the tree grows off the page. As Steinbeck noted, “No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree.” I agree with this because I have attempted both, with mixed results. And I love the idea that you can sketch or photograph a subject but never truly capture it’s essence.

The coast redwood is a California native, growing along the coast (as it’s name implies) with it’s northern range just crossing the border into Oregon. In every sense the coast redwood talked about in superlatives. They are considered the tallest trees on planet earth. The tallest specimen is 379 feet high. They are also long lived, living between 1,200 to 1,800 years old. They are also one of the oldest species on earth.

In Paradise Park, most of the redwoods and Douglas-firs are second growth and are not necessarily considered superlatives of their species. The giants of the species are usually found further north. Except for one exception.

This redwood is known as the “Founders Tree” and it is believed to be the largest and tallest tree in Paradise Park. It is 24 feet in circumference and about 200 feet tall. The tree is estimated to be about 350 years old. Just for context, this tree is older than the government of the United States of American by about 100 years.

Your neck gets sore looking up toward the top of the Founders Tree.

The stone marker notes that the the Founders Tree was dedicated on August 12, 1974 and celebrated the foundation of Paradise Park on August 12, 1924. It is certainly a paradise for me in these tough and uncertain times.

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Nature Loafing

“Adopt the pace of Nature. Her secret is patience.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

With the rest of the school year relegated to distant learning, I decided to spend the remainder of the last trimester at my cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

This was an easy decision because I could be in a place that I love and also have access to everything I needed in my digital classroom to stay connected with my students, parents, and coworkers. In the wooded hills I could really stretch out and breath fresh air while experiencing the world coming alive as Spring was upon us in the San Lorenzo River Watershed.

The calls of Wilson’s warbler, California towhee, and song sparrow was the soundtrack to my mornings and the hoot of the great horned owl dueting across the valley was my evensong.

There is also much more elbow room in Santa Cruz County. A comparison of the population and area of Santa Cruz and San Francisco Counties is telling. The 2019 population of Santa Cruz County is 273,213 compared to 881,549 in San Francisco. The City and County of San Francisco is much smaller, it being hemmed in on three sides by water. The City is 231 square miles compared to the expansive 607 square miles of Santa Cruz County.

It also gave me a opportunity to do one of my favorite activities: nature-loafing. I define nature-loafing as being in nature and actively doing nothing. This definition really captures the oxymoronic nature of this non-pursuit. No agenda, no plan, just being there and being in the moment. All the stress and strain of sheltering in place and distant learning just drains out of me and flows downstream to the Pacific.

Of course I never just nature-loaf because I am also nature sketching at the same time. Like the feature sketch for this post of my hammock-view with my feet pointed upstream and my head downstream.

One of my favorite places to nature-loaf is on the banks of the San Lorenzo and one of my favorite actives is Power Hammocking.

Near Rocky Beach are two alders that are lined up parallel to the course of the river. They are about 15 feet apart and demand that a hammock be strung between; a perfect nature-loafing platform!

My nature loafing stage with the San Lorenzo River on the right.
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Powder Works Covered Bridge

Many think of New England as being associated with covered bridges. I certainly saw many during my fall trip when I was in New Hampshire. But there has been a west coast covered bridge in my life for as long as I can remember.

This is the Powder Works Covered Bridge, which was built in 1872. This bridge was built across the San Lorenzo River (the largest river in Santa Cruz County). The bridge was built by the California Powder Works in the site of the plant that produced black power. The plant operated for 50 years but as the population of Santa Cruz increased combined by the decreasing need for black powder the plant was closed down for good in 1914.

When the original bridge over the river washed out in 1871, the Powder Works Superintendent hired the Pacific Bridge Company (in Oakland) to build a new covered bridge. The bridge was constructed in 71 days, at a cost of $5,250.

Above the fireplace of my family cabin, hangs a 1960 oil painting by my great aunt Marjorie Close. This is probably one of the best paintings ever done of the Powder Works Covered Bridge. And I’ve always looked at it with wonder what it’s amazing thick strokes applied with a pallet knife.

My grand aunt was born in a mining town in Arizona on November 11, 1899. She moved to San Francisco and was trained as an artist at UC Berkley and the Art Institute of Chicago. She was known for her still life work as well as a prominent jeweler and furniture designer.

I have painted this bridge before. One sketch of the bridge was from roughly the same position as my great aunt’s painting. For my new sketch, I wanted a different perspective.

A 2013 sketch of the bridge. I used a limited monotoned color palette for this sketch.

I headed upstream to Rocky Beach, just upriver from the bridge. I found a spot on the beach and I looked downstream to the span. There was lot of trees and vegetation in my view. I did not go for realism when sketching in the flora, instead I wanted to sketch in the form and shapes that leads the eyes downstream to the bridge. So I embraced the form instead of each individual leaf.

I also took a minimalist approach to painting the sketch and keeping it loose was my objective. I left much of the drawing unpainted and I kept my paint palette to a few colors. It is a sketch after all!

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Cabin Birds (Earth Day 2020)

My love of birds was born by spending time at my family’s cabin above the backs of the San Lorenzo River in the Santa Cruz Mountains. My grandma put up a feeder on one corner of the deck that attracted the local chestnut-backed chickadees, pygmy nuthatches, and Steller’s jays.

While I was planning to spend my Spring Break traveling on the California Zephyr to Chicago, the coronavirus pandemic threw a wrench into the works (and changes the lives of others across the world). Instead I headed down to my cabin to shelter in place.

The spring is one of my favorite times at my cabin. Things are finally starting to dry out and temps are gradually warming up. You really start to feel, see and hear the changing of the seasons.

First you feel the air warm against your skin. You start to see the world of green slowly coming alive on the trees and bushes from the desk. And you start to hear the sounds of the neotropic migrants arriving on there summer breeding grounds.

These are the birdsongs that I have not heard in almost a year and I sometimes have to become reacquainted with them, like hearing the voice of a forgotten friend.

The most vocal newly arrived avian member is the diminutive Wilson’s warbler. This little flash of gold is a very vocal member of the spring choir. It calls constantly from the midsts of trees out back. The males at this time of year are setting up their breeding territories and also hoping to attract new-arrived females.

Another migrant is the Pacific-slope flycatcher, of the tricky genus Empidonax. Most of these similar flycatchers can be identified by call alone and I far more ofter hear the “pee-wheet” call of the Pac-slope. Welcome home.

A resident that becomes very vocal at this time is the diminutive Pacific wren, which boasts one of the fastest songs in the avian world at about 32 notes per second! What is amazing is that such a small, drab looking bird can create such a loud and splendid song. I painted a wren from a photograph of a singing male in my backyard bramble.

A pair of common mergansers roosting near the waters of the San Lorenzo River.
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Paradise Park

With the current pandemic and the shelter in place order, I chose to shelter in Paradise during my Spring Break. My family cabin is in Paradise Park, just up Highway 9 from downtown Santa Cruz.

Here I have more legroom than my digs in San Francisco and the population density here is far less than the 7 by 7 mile County and City of Saint Francis. Another factor was that San Francisco had almost 1,000 Covid-19 cases and the larger (by size) County of Santa Cruz had just 90 (at the time of writing). This seemed like a no brainer! Head to Santa Cruz for my two week Spring Break.

This move allows me to spread out, breath fresh air, and be amongst the redwoods and river. It also gives me a very familiar patch to sketch from. Here I know all the birdsongs and paths, all the secluded river beaches, and the places of solitude and rest. And I certainly needed both after three weeks of distant teaching.

Some of my favorite sketching locations in the Park are my redwood deck and different locations on the San Lorenzo River, certainly the most important landform that runs through the Park. A beach that I have always loved both as a place of repose and sketching is what is known in my own person geography as Corona Beach (this was named long before the infamous virus).

To get to Corona Beach involves heading up stream with some bush whacking, fording the San Lorenzo (which was trying to take my feet from under me), and then a little more bush whacking to arrive at a small, sloped river beach. Today it was occupied by a young couple, so I headed up stream (social distancing, dontcha know) and arrived at Upper Corona Beach. A smaller bit of sand on the river side. This is clearly a feral beach, wild, rugged, and something Mary Oliver might write a poem about. Well Mary is no longer with us so I guess I will have to give it a go. . . . a poem hasen’t blessed my brain at the moment (the trouble with poetry) so I did a sketch instead (featured sketch).

I also like to be in open air and sketch the green treescape of the view. This was a excise in creating depth in a sketch. In this desk sketch I included a poem:

With distance,

Objects fade,

Colors run cool,

Details become form,

Like the time,

ten years ago,

My father told me

something

Which I want

to remember.

With this deck sketch I tried to work with creating depth with warm and cool colors and tone. I also worked on my brush work to create the treescape.
Roof view of my cabin surrounded by big-leaf maple, douglas-fir and redwood. The redwoods on right contains Bird Box #2 (the redwood on the left). More on the box in a later post.

Cabin Birds Part Two (Audubon’s Birthday)

“Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.” —John Muir

“to live in this world
you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go”. -Mary Oliver

Spending two weeks during my Spring Break at my cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains gave me the opportunity to slow down and notice the most important things in life. That is life itself. (A nod to you Mr. Ebert)

Birding just adds another layer to experience. It is a soundtrack that not many hear. To those aware, the signs of spring are everywhere. To the calls of the Pacific wren and dark-eyed junco to the sounds of the newly arrived neotropic migrants like Wilson’s warbler, Pacific-slope flycatcher, and black-headed grosbeak. The latter bird I heard on my last day at my cabin, when I heard a district “clip” contact call. I headed out to the deck to see this beautiful flash of orange, back, and white.

This was a First of Season (FOS) bird for me. The males arrive on their breeding grounds from Mexico just ahead of the females and the males proclaim their place in the world with their robin-like song. This has always been a favorite cabin bird and it arrives in mid April most years.

The sky above the San Lorenzo River is filled with newly arrived swallows at this time of year. The most common species are tree and violet-green swallows. Swallows are insectivores and are aerial acrobats that catch flying insects on the wing. Like the Swallows of San Juan Capistrano, swallows are a sign of renewed and the turning of the season from winter to spring.

The aerial insectivore, one of North America’s most beautiful swallow.

Just as I was packing up the car to return to San Fransisco, the natural world gave me a parting gift. I noticed that a pair of chestnut-backed chickadees were cleaning out one of the nesting boxes that I had built and hung on a redwood near the parking lot. This gives me such a sense of joy that I have played a small part in helping to create life.

The two weeks I spent in Paradise was a great was to slow down and really appreciate life.

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Art of Rain

Simplicity is not a simple thing. ― Charles Chaplin

I have always wanted to paint with rain. A cloistered spring break at my cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains, with rain in the forecast, provided the opportunity.

All I had to do is create the stage and let nature do the rest. I love to think of this as a collaboration with something I can’t control. Which really sums up the medium of watercolor. It is a medium that often controls you. If you work in this medium, you have to accept the unacceptable!

In the past I have painted in drizzle and have loved the added texture which can be unpredictable. The last time I was on my school’s campus, before we were relegated to distance teaching, I painted the scene from my recess duty view. There was a light drizzle that specked the wash which really became an added memory of the time and place. This sketch was posted in my “Distance Learning” post.

This time I wanted to work with purpose. This meant that the process was not just left to pure happenstance. I had to plan and be prepared to capture spontaneity. Pure oxymoronic painting.

With the first few sprinkles hitting the deck, I used drafting tape to create a border on a Fluid 8 x 8 inch, 140 lb watercolor block. I laid in a thick wash of indigo. I walked out to the deck and exposed the still-wet-wash to the elements. Now the wet elements do her magic.

Setting the stage: a wash of indigo framed in with drafting tape. I held the paper to the skies and let the rain do the work.

When I look at this simple painting I’m amazed at its brilliance. And I say that without any ego because I had very little to do with the creation of this piece of art. And for me that’s why it is amazing and transcendent because it deals with the force that is beyond my control yet creates something absolutely sublime.

The painting grew into it’s finished state as the paint slowly dried. And the finished painting is something I could have never envisioned. It surprised and delighted me!

This experience has taught me that sometimes you just need to get out of the way! Let nature do the work, like she always does.

And to my artist friends out there. Go and make your own expressions and let Mother Nature be your guide! She is a great teacher!

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Spring Birding

I took young Grasshopper Sparrow to one of my favorite birding locations in Santa Cruz County, the Old Cove Landing Trail, at Wilder Ranch State Park.

Birding in the spring is a pleasure as you see returning migrants and signs of newborn life. Males are defending their territories in song and are frequently seen perched on prominent singing perches giving a birder great views!

One lifer on Grasshopper’s list was a pigeon guillemot, an alcid that is not a pigeon but a bird of the near shore. Once we hit the coast the guillemots were an easy tick with many on the water or resting on cliffs. We had sensational views and we moved on down the coast in search of more signs of spring.

The spring pleasures are not only reserved to the avian world. As we were about a mile down the trail which follows the contours of the coast, a long-tailed weasel crossed our path! Perhaps an adult hunting to feed its growing kittens. We watched as it’s black-tipped tail disappeared into the green grass.

My young acolyte, Grasshopper Sparrow’s spread about our brief encounter with a life mammal.

We continued on and were rewarded with a black phoebe nest with a near fledgling. Grasshopper thought the chick was dead but I suggested it was just in instinctual frozen mode at the sight of two large bipeds approaching.

We then headed back, adding more lifers to Grasshopper’s growing list and I wanted to check in on another sign of spring just south on Highway One at Natural Bridges State Beach. The eucalyptus grove here is known for the 150,000 wintering monarch butterflies. Most were gone now. We were here for owls!

From the butterfly viewing platform we easily spotted the two adult great horned owls with their recently fledged owlet. These owls start their breeding cycle early as the don’t construct their own nests. Instead they borrowed a red-shouldered hawk’s nest.

As we headed out, the local male Bewick’s wren was perched up, proclaiming his place in the world.