Afternoon run in the hills

If you keep visiting the same places, you see things.  The same place is not the same day to day, month to month, year to year. 

Seasons change. 

Migratory birds come and go.

And sometimes, you just see something you've never seen before.

That is a very bad photo.  But it shows two white pelicans on the left, a turkey vulture in the center, and two red-tail hawks -- all riding the same air current about 400 feet above the trail.  Pelicans, clockwise; hawks counter-clockwise.

So what else did I see? 

I don't know who is the cause of this sign.  In a good wet year (not this year!) I think the California Newt (Taricha torosa) is out crossing roads to get to vernal pools and streams in September.  So for one thing, this is the wrong time of year for newt crossings (I think?).  For another thing, this spot is on an outside curve of the road, not at the inside curve of the arroyo where (if there were water) there would be a concentration of newts (at whatever the newts think is the right time to go all amphibian).  So:  strange naturalist/environmentalist behavior here. 

We may have seen this hillside before in these pages.  Adobe clay sliding and crumbling (depending on season and wet year / dry year) over the sandstone cliff supports blue dicks, poppies, grasses -- and later on, a variety of thorny, thistley things.

It was a lovely post-equinoctial day with little wind and lots of sunshine.  6.4 "Long, Slow" miles.  Sunday is the end of my "running week".  (I'm a Monday-start sort of guy really.  Theology aside, the weekend is the Week End.)  So it was a nice end to the Running Week as well.