For a long time now I’ve wanted to document a phenomenon that I’ve observed many times: the way that some birds change color when they move from the light into the dark. I’m sure you’ve noticed this before, in the vibrance of a peacock’s tail that turns to black when the bird moves into the…
Month: February 2018
Getting skunked by birds
This week I took my Ecology students to the Younger Lagoon Reserve (YLR) on the UC Santa Cruz Coastal Science Campus. The YLR is one of 39 natural reserves in all of the major ecosystems throughout the state of California. The UCSC campus administers five of the reserves: Younger Lagoon, the Campus Reserve, Fort Ord Natural…
Trailblazers
Who do you think makes these tracks in the sand? Any guesses? Here’s another photo, taken from farther away to give you a bigger picture of the scale of things. Believe it or not, the maker of these trails is the little black turban snail, Tegula funebralis. They are one of my favorite animals in…
Students begin observing succession
This week’s field trip for my Ecology class was the first of two visits to the Santa Cruz harbor. The students’ task was to select a site to monitor for a semester-long study of ecological succession. The floating docks at the harbor are the ideal site for this kind of study because I know from…