Found on my dog and presuming it was picked up on walk around Antonelli Pond or in Terrace Point vicinity almost 48 hours previously. This seems like a long time for a tick to ride around on my dog without embedding its head for feeding. This is a male tick and I was wondering if they need a blood meal like the females. (Male mosquitos don't.) From what I could learn from a few websites, males in their third instar do not feed, but hang out on hosts hoping to find a female. So apparently this tick viewed my dog as a potential marriage bed, not a meal.
This poor, desiccated specimen looks like it was a gravid female assuming I'm correct in guessing those yellow balls are eggs.
It's not unusual to see harbor seals along the Santa Cruz County coast, but I have never seen one in the San Lorenzo River before. This one was above the Riverside Ave. Bridge. There was unusually high surf at the time, and waves were moving up the river. Possibly the heavy surf might have motivated this seal to move up the river. There might have been more than one, but I never saw more than one head pop up at a time.
About a week before I saw five harbor seals at the mouth of the river pulling out on the beach, not a typical pullout spot.
On cliff face above beach.
Alonf Jacques Gulch growing with young willows.
Six of these blue butterflies were stopping on gravel and mud at edge of Jacques Gulch stream.
