Up at 6:00 am again and out the door at 6:30 with my friend Roxanne for a long trip to the Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park in Oakland.  “[The] Dr. Aurelia Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park is a part of the East Bay Regional Parks District in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is located in the hills east of Oakland. The park contains the largest remaining natural stand of coast redwood found in the East Bay.”  It was the hope of seeing something different in the redwoods that prompted us to make the journey.

We took the “scenic route” which was about 2-hours one way. Roxanne did all of the driving, for which I was immensely grateful. From Interstate 5 South, we took Highway 160 South to Highway 4 West, then from Highway 24 West to Highway 13 South, and then into the park (which is huge). 

We were following the directions of “The Google Lady”, but when we were on Highway 160 she didn’t tell us to make a left-hand turn over a drawbridge so we went straight ahead. Then The Google Lady took us in a wide circle around old levee roads back to where the bridge was. 

I was peeved that we’d been led in a circle, but if we hadn’t made that unexpected side-trip we would have missed some great sights like a Great Egret rookery, a Great Blue Heron sitting on its nest, and a huge Black-Crowned Night Heron day roost (with maybe 100 birds in it). So, I couldn’t complain too much. Hah!

When we got to the park we found the Redwood Gate and went in through there. Normally, you have to pay a day-use fee of $5 per vehicle, but today the fees were waived. That was nice to see.

Our first priority was finding a working restroom or porta-potty. (Had to get rid of our breakfast coffee. Hah!) We found one restroom facility, but it was boarded up without-of-order signs on it, and another sign directing us to another restroom at the end of the drive. We thought it was odd, in this time of COVID, for whomever oversees the park to have EVERYONE collect at that one restroom… Wouldn’t that increase the chances of contamination? Well, at least there were flush toilets and a sink to wash your hands.  I was also pleased to see EVERYONE wearing face protection, gators or masks, everywhere we went in the park. Social distancing was also maintained, even on the trails.

We found a shaded place to park right near where a couple of trail meet, so we picked a direction and just started walking, no looking for anything in particular, just taking everything in. (Well, I HAD hoped to see a banana slug, or some newts, or a Giant Salamander… but it just wasn’t wet enough there. The creek wasn’t “creeking” much.  And the air was still a little chilly in the shadier parts. I was comfortable in my long-sleeved shirt for the most part. I was sunny but a little breezy.

CLICK HERE for the full album of photos.

Lots of lichen to look at, but only a few fungi. There was Elegant Fringe Lichen, Heterodermia leucomelos, which I had never seen before. It looked like a plain tube lichen… but had fine black hairs sprouting out all over the thallus. Very cool! The bark on some of the trees were “fluffy” with different kinds of beard lichen, and on the ends of the boards of part of a low fence along the trail we saw Powderhorn lichen. Lots to look at.

One of the most curious lichen we found (to me) was a kind of pelt lichen growing on top of moss on a boulder. The underside of each “leaf” of the pelt was covered in “teeth” that grabbed into the moss.  I’d never seen that before.

Among the fungi we saw different kinds of Stereum and crust fungus, some Sulphur Tuft mushrooms, and some purple-black Cramp Balls. I was expecting more, but again it wasn’t wet enough there…and we only worked one area. The park is huge, so there might have been more to see elsewhere.

As we first drove in, I saw a Bewick’s Wren and a Robin greeting us.  And then as we walked the trails, we could hear little peeping birds everywhere, but catching sight of one and then being able to photograph it was quite a feat. There were tiny chickadees in the upper branches of the trees, and little spotted Brown Creepers working on the bark. Both kinds of birds are very small and hard to see even in good light. In the shade of the trees, photographing them was even more difficult because the camera’s auto-focus fought me against the dark shadows.

In one area we watched some Spotted Towhees flying amid the underbrush, and then participating in what looked like knock-down drag-out fights with one another. In other areas, we could hear the towhees calling to one another in their raspy voices, but couldn’t see them.

Later, we heard something that sounded sort of like a jay, but not exactly like the Scrub Jays we see regularly in the Valley. Looking around, we realized the sound was coming from Steller’s Jays (large blue jays with a smokey black head and crest). At yet another stop, we had a pair of ravens cawing to each other in a tree over our head.

The plants and trees, though, gave us a LOT to look at and photograph. (I took 1000 photos on this trip.) The bay trees were in blossom everywhere, and there were alders, oaks and willows, acacias, hazelnut trees, madrones and buckeye, and redwoods, of course. The understory was crammed full of a variety of plants, vines, mosses and ferns. [I figure it will take me DAYS to sort through everything and get it identified.] There were quite a few new-to-me things almost everywhere we looked so it made for a very interesting and curiosity provoking hike. 

Dotted throughout the landscape where we were, there were trees with white flowers on them that we assumed were either some kind of almond or some kind of plum. (They all look the same to me.) We also found some Flowering Currant plants that were starting to flower. The pink flowers were all on dangling racemes; some of the flowers were just starting to open.  

I also saw my first trillium plant. I’d seen photos of them, of course, but had never seen one “live” before. It’s bud was sitting in the middle of its large spotted leaves, but it hadn’t opened yet. Still, very interesting.

Rox pointed out stands of small liverwort plants, and showed me the little pockets in which the “gemmae” were sitting.  The gemmae are tiny cellular bodies that can separate from the mother plant and form new plants. Usually, the mechanism that separates these gemmae from the liverwort plants is simple rainfall. This type of asexual reproduction is referred to as “fragmentation”.

While we were walking along, a young man came up — I think he said he was visiting from Slovenia — and asked if we knew where he could get something to eat nearby. I was so intent on trying get a photo of a Dark-Eyed Junco at the time that I didn’t say anything, and let Rox explain to him that we weren’t from the area ourselves, so we didn’t know where anything was — and there was no cellphone service there — so we weren’t able to be of much help. It wasn’t until after he left us and the Junco was gone that it occurred to me that I could have given him my lunch if he was really hungry. D’oh!

Elsewhere, we saw old willow stem galls, as well as some fresh bud galls on Coyote Brush. A new gall for me was the one on honeysuckle. It’s a kind of “rosette” gall that looks like a little bouquet of green flowers. It’s caused by the Honeysuckle Gall Midge, Lonicerae lonicera.

A surprise for me for the day was spotting a Mourning Cloak butterfly. They’re a dark butterfly with light trim on their wings. These are interesting butterflies in that they don’t generally feed on nectar or pollen; they prefer to feed on tree sap and rotting fruit.

They’re also a butterfly that overwinters as adults and estivate in the summer. So, they fly and mate in the late winter and spring, sleep in the treetops during the hot summer months, and then fly again in the late fall and early winter months looking for food to help them overwinter. Females lay eggs on willows, elms or hackberry trees, wrapping the eggs around twigs in circling groups. When the caterpillars hatch they feed inside a communal web before they pupate and emerge as butterflies in June or July.

One thing that really ticked us off was seeing dog-poo bags left all over the trails. I don’t understand why people pick up their dog’s poop to keep the feces from contaminating the landscape — but then leave it in a bag that will contaminate the landscape. Idiocy. On the second half of our walk, Rox brought a larger bag with her and picked up the bags of crap so she could dispose of them properly.

Another hiker saw what she was doing and thanked Rox for her efforts. The woman said she usually scolds those she sees dumping the bags and reminds them that the people who take care of the park aren’t their maids and don’t get paid to clean up after other people’s dogs. And she’s right. It’s a conundrum: do you clean up after the pigs who leave their dog’s poop bags on the trail (thereby facilitating their misbehavior), or do you leave the bags and let the environment be tainted by them?

Our walk took us along a piece of the West Ridge Trail. We went out as far as I could before the trail started to incline too much for me, and then we turned around and went back the way we came. That took us back to where the car was parked, so we stopped there for lunch. Then we headed out in direction opposite from the West Ridge Trail, and took the Bridle Trail past the intersections of the Fern Trail and the Mill Trail. By then I wasn’t able to go much further, so we turned around and went back the way we’d come, ending back at the car once more. This counted as #23 of my #52HikeChallenge. Woot!

Traffic going home was horrendous. We’re not used to that around Sacramento since COVID; it took us hours to get home… with a full moon rising. We got back to the house a little before 7:00 pm. So, that was a long day for us, but I really enjoyed it. Thanks to Roxanne for doing all the driving.

Species List:

1. American Bugleweed, Lycopus americanus [like horehound]
2. American Kestrel, Falco sparverius
3. American Robin, Turdus migratorius
4. Bedstraw, Velcro Grass, Cleavers, Galium aparine
5. Belted Kingfisher, Megaceryle alcyon [along a slough by the road]
6. Bewick’s Wren, Thryomanes bewickii
7. Black-Crowned Night Heron, Nycticorax nycticorax
8. Black Phoebe, Sayornis nigricans
9. Brewer’s Blackbird, Euphagus cyanocephalus
10. Bristly Beard Lichen, Usnea hirta [thin bristly fronds]
11. Brown Creeper, Certhia americana
12. Bumpy Rim-Lichen, Lecanora hybocarpa [tan to brown apothecia]
13. California Bay, Umbellularia californica
14. California Buckeye Chestnut Tree, Aesculus californica
15. California Camouflage Lichen, Melanelixia californica [dark green with brown apothecia, on trees]
16. California Oak Moth, Phryganidia californica
17. California Scrub Jay, Aphelocoma californica
18. California Scrub Oak, Quercus berberidifolia
19. Canada Goose, Branta canadensis
20. Cherry-Plum Tree, Prunus cerasifera
21. Chestnut-Backed Chickadee, Poecile rufescens
22. Chickweed, Common Chickweed, Stellaria media
23. Coast Redwood, Sequoia sempervirens
24. Coastal Manroot, Marah oregana
25. Coastal Woodfern, Dryopteris arguta
26. Common Cowparsnip, Heracleum maximum
27. Common Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale
28. Common Hazel Tree, Corylus avellana [long catkins, no pseudo cones]
29. Common Pincushion Moss, Dicranoweisia cirrata
30. Common Powderhorn, Cladonia coniocraea
31. Common Snowberry, Symphoricarpos albus
32. Coyote Brush, Baccharis pilularis
33. Coyote Brush Bud Gall midge, Rhopalomyia californica
34. Cramp Ball Fungus, Annulohypoxylon thouarsianum
35. Crescent-Cup Liverwort, Lunularia cruciate [look for the gemmae in the cups]
36. Crevice Alumroot, Heuchera micrantha
37. Crow, American Crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos
38. Dark-Eyed Junco, Junco hyemalis
39. Dendroalsia Moss, Dendroalsia abietina [long, curling tendrils on trees]
40. Dog Pelt Lichen, Peltigera canina [thick “skin” with lots of “teeth” on the back of the pelt]
41. Double-Crested Cormorant, Phalacrocorax auratus [along a slough by the road]
42. Elegant Fringe Lichen, Heterodermia leucomelos
43. European Gooseberry, Ribes uva-crispa [thorny]
44. False Turkey-Tail, Stereum ostrea
45. Farinose Cartilage Lichen,  Ramalina farinacea [like Oakmoss but very thin branches]
46. Fishbone Beard Lichen, Usnea filipendula
47. Fluffy Dust Lichen, Lepraria finkii
48. French Broom, Genista monspessulana
49. Fringe Cups, Tellima grandiflora [leaves similar to Crevice Alumroot]
50. Frosted Rim-Lichen, Lecanora caesiorubella 
51. Giant Vetch, Vicia gigantea
52. Giant White Wakerobin, Trillium albidum
53. Goldback Fern, Pentagramma triangularis
54. Gouty Stem Gall Wasp, Callirhytis quercussuttoni
55. Great Blue Heron, Ardea herodias
56. Great Egret, Ardea alba
57. Greater White-Fronted Goose, Anser albifrons [in fields along the road]
58. Green Shield Lichen, Flavoparmelia caperata
59. Grey House Spider, Badumna longinqua [sheet web with funnel]
60. Hermit Thrush, Catharus guttatus
61. Himalayan Blackberry, Rubus bifrons [white flowers]
62. Honeysuckle Gall Midge, Lonicerae lonicera [rosette gall]
63. Killdeer, Charadrius vociferous
64. Lace Lichen, Ramalina menziesii
65. Madrone, Pacific Madrone, Arbutus menziesii
66. Mealy Rim-Lichen, Lecanora strobilina [greenish apothecia]
67. Mourning Cloak Butterfly, Nymphalis antiopa
68. Mustard Yellow Polypore, Fuscoporia gilva [like a bracket fungus]
69. Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus
70. Oakmoss Lichen, Evernia prunastri [like strap but with soredia]
71. Ocre Spreading Tooth Fungus, Steccherinum ochraceum
72. Onion, Allium sp.
73. Pacific Ninebark, Physocarpus capitatus
74. Pacific Pea, Lathyrus vestitus
75. Periwinkle, Greater Periwinkle, Vinca major
76. Pink Honeysuckle, California Honeysuckle, Lonicera hispidula
77. Poison Hemlock, Conium maculatum
78. Raven, Common Raven, Corvus corax
79. Red Flowering Currant, Ribes sanguineum var. glutinosum
80. Red-Shouldered Hawk, Buteo lineatus
81. Red-Tailed Hawk, Buteo jamaicensis
82. Red-Winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus
83. Ring-Necked Duck, Aythya collaris
84. Rose, Rosa sp.
85. Sandhill Crane, Grus canadensis [in fields along the road]
86. Sheet Weaver Spiders, Family: Linyphiidae
87. Shield Lichen, Parmelia sulcata [greyish,veined]
88. Shiny Copper Mushroom, Nolanea sp.
89. Shrubby Sunburst Lichen, Polycauliona candelaria
90. Silver Wattle, Acacia dealbata
91. Sitka Willow, Salix sitchensis
92. Smokey-Eyed Boulder Lichen, Porpidia albocaerulescens
93. Snow Goose, Chen caerulescens [in fields along the road]
94. Speckled Greenshield Lichen, Flavopunctelia flaventior
95. Spotted Towhee, Pipilo maculatus
96. Steller’s Jay, Cyanocitta stelleri
97. Strap Lichen, Western Strap Lichen, Ramalina leptocarpha [without soredia]
98. Sulphur Tuft Mushroom, Hypholoma fasciculare
99. Tall Flatsedge, Cyperus eragrostis
100. Toothed Crust Fungus, Steccherinum ochraceum
101. Toyon, Heteromeles arbutifolia
102. Trailing Blackberry, California Blackberry, Rubus ursinus
103. Tree-skirt Moss, Pseudanomodon attenuates
104. Turkey Tail Fungus, Trametes versicolor
105. Turkey Vulture, Cathartes aura
106. Wavy-Leafed Soap Plant, Soaproot, Chlorogalum pomeridianum
107. Western Sword Fern, Polystichum munitum
108. White Alder, Alnus rhombifolia
109. White Tailed Kite, Elanus leucurus
110. Whitewash Lichen, Phlyctis argena
111. Willow Stem Sawfly Gall, Euura exiguae
112. Wood Forget-Me-Not, Myosotis sylvatica
113. Yerba Santa, California Yerba Santa, Eriodictyon californicum
114. ?? Tube Lichen
115. ?? White-flowered fruit trees