A Cat-Faced Spider and some Devil’s Thorns, 10-19-19

Around 7:00 am, I went out with my friend and fellow naturalist Roxanne to the “Open Trail Day” at the Bufferlands Regional San. The bufferlands are comprise of 2150 acres of land around the Sacramento wastewater treatment facility that separate the facility from the surrounding neighborhoods – and had been landscaped to provide natural and manmade habitat for regional wildlife and plant species.

Certified California Naturalist, Roxanne Moger, walking down the trail surrounded by poison oak.

According to their website, “…With a varied mix of upland and wetland habitats, the Bufferlands is an important wildlife area, supporting more than 230 species of birds, 25 species of native mammals and several native fish, amphibians, and reptiles. The Bufferlands is also home to more than 20 species of rare plants and animals, including several threatened and endangered species such as Swainson’s hawk, vernal pool fairy shrimp and giant garter snakes… Habitat restoration and enhancement efforts on the Bufferlands are ongoing. Through these efforts, the size of our riparian forests has more than doubled, and native perennial grasses are now an integral part of the landscape. Also, our staff continues to work with the resident farmers to better structure Bufferlands agricultural operations to benefit wildlife. For example, cattle grazing is used to enhance areas for the western burrowing owl, where vegetation would otherwise become too thick for these small raptors to hunt…”

A lot of its current look is due in great part to Roger Jones, their Senior Natural Resource Specialist. And he’s a great nature photographer to boot.

This is one of my favorite photos that Roger took. He let me use it with **my article on coyotes.**

Access to the property is generally controlled, but the facility holds a lot of events there including walks to view cormorant, heron and egret rookeries, birdwatching at Meadowlark and Fishhead Lakes, the “Walk on the Wild Side” annual party and tours, and today’s Open Trail Day among others.

Finding the entrance to place proved to be a little tricky. The route Roxanne normally takes there was shut down at one point, so she had to recalculate and approach it from another way. Still, I was amazed at how “hidden” the gravel road into the park side of the preserve was: a narrow opening across the street from a marina in the tiny town of Fremont. There was plenty of parking on a grass and gravel lawn, and the trails were clearly marked, so once we got there we were good for the rest of the morning. Roger and one of the other rangers were there to check us in. He remembered Roxanne from previous excursions there and remembered me from Tuleyome. He also follows me on Facebook and offered condolences for my loss of Sergeant Margie. Aww. I thought that was so thoughtful of him.

CLICK HERE for the full album of photos.

We’re still between seasons – the migrating birds haven’t come in yet, and it’s still too dry for fungi – so there wasn’t a massive number of things to see. Part of the trail, too, led under the I5 Freeway, where construction was going on, so any wildlife we might have seen around there was scared off by the noise and mess. But we did enjoy spotting the iron animal totems along the route that went through a shallow forest of 100-year old oak trees, and the poison oak was actually quite beautiful this time of year. So, most of my photos today were scenery shots.

See how many metal animal totems you can find along the trails.

The real standout was a Cat-Faced Spider we found in her big web on our walk back to the parking area. She was a big gal, who tried to thwart our attempts to get pictures of her, until we got her to climb on top of our cellphones. Hah! Had no idea those things were good for that.

I saw a few things I’d never seen or gotten good photos of before, and that’s always fun: Osage-Orange, Devil’s Thorns, Spiny Rose Galls and Panicled Willowherb.

Puncture Vine, Devil’s Thorns, Tribulus terrestris

We ended up walking for about 4 hours, which was really beyond my limit, especially after my long walk at the Zoo yesterday and my lack of sleep during the night. I was totally exhausted and hurting all over when we got back home.