Illustrations by Jane Kim; text by Bay Nature staff.
What’s that on your beak?
On the underside of a western gull (Larus occidentalis)’s deep yellow bill is a bright red blotch, like a smudge of forgotten ketchup. It’s there with a purpose. The gull’s chicks, often born in threes around June and covered in fluffy down with a spray of black spots, eye it like the target that it is. The chicks are inclined to peck at all red items, so they instinctively jab at this bull’s-eye. The adult gull responds by regurgitating food, which the chicks eat. Biologist Niko Tinbergen studied these behaviors in depth in the 1940s, documenting that the chicks’ involuntary action causes the parents’ involuntary action. It’ll be about three years before a chick’s black bill changes to yellow and its own red spot emerges.
Make bubbles, not war
Male ruddy ducks (Oxyura jamaicensis) are striking, in both senses of the word: their flashy coloring and their fight club moves. You can be sure they’ll be sparring in wetlands during the breeding season this spring. A male will hunch and rush at others, but also, more charmingly, he’ll raise and fan out his tail feathers, then repeatedly slap his blue bill against his chest. This pushes air through his feathers and into the water, creating a crescent of (intimidating!) bubbles. Curiously, he uses the same bubble move while courting.
Cool hand bark
The reddish-orange barked Pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii), a one-of-a-kind tree in Bay Area forests, has another name: refrigerator tree. Put your hand on its silken trunk, especially where the red bark has peeled away to show fresh, chartreuse-colored wood, and you’ll feel the cool. It’s thanks to the efficient heat transfer from your hand to the smooth bark; rough bark doesn’t do the job nearly so well. The tree sheds annually from late spring through summer.
Cartoon life
In a grassland, or your spring vegetable garden, a healthy plant suddenly begins to quiver, then shudder, and then shorten. Blink—and it’s gone, just sucked into the earth. A Botta’s pocket gopher (Thomomys bottae), our region’s only gopher, is likely now noshing on those greens, or stuffing them into its external, fur-lined cheek pouches to carry them to a food chamber within its vast system of tunnels and burrows. Look for a nearby horseshoe of fresh dirt hugging a small mound of loose soil—that’s the closed door to the gopher’s tunnel.
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Not a possum, not a shrimp
In late spring, dozens of opossum shrimp (Neomysis mercedis) larvae wriggle free from their mother’s brood pouch and into Bay–Delta waters. This order of shrimplike crustaceans, called Mysida, rear their young in marsupial-like pouches. Adults can grow to a half-inch in length, a nutritious tasty snack for Delta dwellers like the Delta smelt, longfin smelt, and Chinook salmon. N. mercedis once dominated the mysid scene in the Delta waters, but their numbers have dropped, due to competition from an invasive clam and invasive fellow mysids.
A globe of wonder
There’s something pretty wonderful about coming upon a woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca), perhaps in a patch of dappled sun by a creek, like nature’s offered up a wee ruby-red gift just for you. Who doesn’t react with an “Oh! Look …”? In spring, the plant is its best self—all at once it’s got the generous green leaves, white-petaled flowers, and marble-size berries, studded with seeds. Consider leaving those morsels for the birds and others who will spread the seeds, upping your future chances at a moment of wonder.
