I got up around 7:15 this morning, and headed out almost immediately with Sergeant Margie to the American River Bend Park.  We walked for about three hours and saw a variety of fungi, molds, and birds.  When we first got into the park, there was a doe on the side of the road, but as soon as I got my camera out of its bag, she was already gone off into the thicket.  Dang it!  On our walk, I was surprised to see the amount of pipevine that was already in bloom along the river; it’s about a month early.  And I also saw one or two Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies — which are also early.  There isn’t enough pipevine for their babies to eat yet…  The weather is messing with the plants and critters. The dog and I took a short detour down closer to river, and saw some fry and tadpoles in the water, some fish skeletons on the shore along with some clam shells…

I had two cameras with me on this trip: my big Fujifilm camera, and a smaller pocket-sized camera that Tuleyome got with the Norcross grant.  I wanted to test it out and figure out the settings so I can teach it to folks we lend the cameras to on outings.  The little camera doesn’t do well with long-distance telephoto shots because its range is too shallow, but the macros setting on it is wonderful.  So, it’s great to take on fungus crawls or wildflower walks.  And it’s super easy to use, so it will be easy to teach others how to handle it.    Nice.  I’m glad we were able to get them.