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For short-eared owls, finding new ways to run away is a key to longevity. Born in ground nests, short-eared owls are ver...
19/08/2022

For short-eared owls, finding new ways to run away is a key to longevity. Born in ground nests, short-eared owls are very vulnerable from the start. 🦊🦅🐺 Foxes, skunks, ravens, hawks and coyotes are all a threats to eggs and to young owlets until they fledge. 🐣 Their fear of predators isn't the only reason they're hard to spot. Short-eared owls fly, hunt, and nest as close to the roots of brush as possible. 🌾🦉 Once on the ground, their camouflage makes them almost undetectable to the human eye.

Around the world people are reporting reclaiming our empty spaces. (Remember the viral hoax about dolphins in the Veni...
19/08/2022

Around the world people are reporting reclaiming our empty spaces. (Remember the viral hoax about dolphins in the Venice canals? 🐬) So we wondered: Are responding differently with fewer ships, cars, and people out in the Bay Area?
Bay Nature asked several Northern California wildlife experts how wildlife are responding to a quieter Bay Area, and they all said basically the same thing. Wildlife are behaving normally!
🐺 San Francisco Animal Care & Control said there’s been an increase in sightings, but that the actual behavior is “nothing that we haven’t seen before.” Jonathan Young, an ecologist at the Presidio Trust who put tracking collars on a number of coyotes in SF, said “None of our tracking info shows any difference.”

There are 10,000-plus species of birds in the world, about 1,100 species in the United States, and 350 or so in the grea...
18/08/2022

There are 10,000-plus species of birds in the world, about 1,100 species in the United States, and 350 or so in the greater Bay Area, so there is great variability in nests. 🐣 Pictured here is a robin's "cup"-shaped nest, a style used by many songbirds, made of mud, grasses, twigs, feathers, and more.
For years, we saw nest-building as an innate activity that was totally instinctual. 🧠 But there have been some interesting recent studies of how birds learn and improve in their nest-making ability—and perhaps their reproductive success.

Mourning cloak butterflies mean spring in the Bay Area! 🌼 These "harbingers of spring" are one of the longest-lived butt...
18/08/2022

Mourning cloak butterflies mean spring in the Bay Area! 🌼 These "harbingers of spring" are one of the longest-lived butterfly species, with adults living for 8-12 months. (Most butterflies live 2-6 WEEKS as adults!) Instead of spending the winter as eggs, larvae, or pupae, mourning cloaks overwinter as adults. As the butterflies age, the yellow markings fade and their wing edges become tattered, so you can get a sense of one's age by observing its wings. 🔎

In a typical summer, tourists flock to coastal places like Elkhorn Slough to kayak with sea otters. 🚣‍♂️ But what does t...
17/08/2022

In a typical summer, tourists flock to coastal places like Elkhorn Slough to kayak with sea otters. 🚣‍♂️ But what does the constant human interaction cost this protected species? 👀
Unlike other marine mammals, sea otters have no blubber. They eat 25% of their body weight in crabs and other shellfish, but they burn so many calories trying to keep warm that they continuously hover on the brink of starvation. 🥺
Recent research found otters get startled by human activity an average of 6 times per day. 🛶⛵️ Scientists calculated that to replenish the calories burned by swimming away, otters need to eat an extra 1/3 of a crab each day, or 11 clams. 🦀 That doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up over time. Plus, foraging for that extra food means even less time spent napping, and more energy lost.

The range is also a mixing zone, reflecting botanical influences from almost every part of the state. 🌼🌸🌷 There are plac...
17/08/2022

The range is also a mixing zone, reflecting botanical influences from almost every part of the state. 🌼🌸🌷 There are places where you can find trees like Jeffrey pine or incense cedar that otherwise live mainly in the Sierra Nevada. 🌲 There are places in the Panoche Hills where you can find characteristic of the Mojave Desert. There are also many flowers found exclusively in the Diablo Range, like San Benito evening primrose, Mount Diablo fairy lantern, and talus fritillary.

Moths are essential pollinators that don't get nearly enough credit. 💚This large and striking species, the white-lined s...
17/08/2022

Moths are essential pollinators that don't get nearly enough credit. 💚
This large and striking species, the white-lined sphinx, belongs to a family of moths called hummingbird moths, named not just for their large size but also for their hummingbird-like feeding habits—they furiously flap their wings as they slurp nectar from flowers. 🌸 In contrast to many other moths and butterflies, white-lined sphinx caterpillars can eat a wide variety of host plants and can take advantage of boom years when the weather’s good.

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