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Xerces Society Monarch Surveying Day - Island has had massive development since last year. Major, mature eucalyptus trees cut down. Had 45+ Monarchs sunning mid-canopy on Coast Guard property to the East on the island. Makes me crazy how much...tremulous fragility...is projected onto these creatures. Quite, quite scrappy butterflies.

Came sniffing around our empty trash cans around 4:30 a.m., climbed over fence and spent a good 45 minutes in our yard before leaving a little present then hopping back fence and disappearing into Eaton Canyon

I think this is a rock scallop? At first I thought it was an imprint of a shell in hardened anoxic mud, but it's concave and looks like there's a hinge on the other side. Any thoughts on why it's so dark?

New one to me! This crazy nudibranch was not teeny -- about 1" long. Cream body with brown speckling and cool yellow lines. Large foot. Rows of gills like Dendronotus? Oral tentacles flicked up and down like a cockatoo's crest. BUT THE WEIRDEST THING were these crazy long flowing 'streamers' coming from the top of each rhinophore sheath - kind of looked like worms, though clearly attached and marked like the rest of the body (cream with brown specks). Found on Tubularia. Invasive? Video: https://www.flickr.com/photos/30314434@N06/25521619833/in/dateposted/

Calling out the big guns for help: @tgosliner @mcduck @rebeccafay @sluglust @kestrel @kueda

UPDATE 5/16/2016: Here's the very nice video that the California Academy of Sciences created about this guy: https://www.facebook.com/calacademy/videos/10154157032862311/

Best Part of Walk: this Niebla caught my eye up the hill. An old W.P.A. trail up over the summit, inaccessible for years due to poison-oak has Been Cleared! I walked in an area I'd always dreamed of exploring. Lichen-a-go-go! Not a lot of this county I've not been in...

I returned from the Texas this week straight into my annual commitment to survey the Western Migration/Overwintering Sites of the Monarch ( Danaus plexxipus ) in San Francisco County.
With Mr. Adolph Sutro's "gift " of Blue Gum Eucalyptus to our city more than 100 years ago, this is a great deal more difficult than it sounds - complete "needle in haystack " work for three weeks and, to be honest, not really...fun. I've done this now for 8 years and we have so few Monarchs that a real Natural Bridges-them-flying-everywhere-in-the-canopy is something I never see. Dr. John Hafernik reported 700 in Golden Gate Park in 1997. I've never seen anything coming close to that at any historic site I visit...
Until today...
Reports had come in from the staff at the Presidio Trust of "dozens and dozens" in certain areas. Took two buses and climbed up the known north-facing wall of Rob Hill, a historic roost that had been radically altered due to restoration for the endangered San Francisco Lessinga ( Lessingia germanium ). The Presidio Trust has been working with Dr. Stuart Weiss to protect the known habitat for the Monarchs while drastically thinning the north-facing wall of Eucs. I walked to the far eastern portion of the Hill and...there they were. Numbers I've never seen it San Francisco. Most of them sunning themselves. Nothing much to nectar on but...clearly a healthy roost.
Counted approximately 225 - the most I've ever seen in our county in one day.
Not really interested in the never-ending politics of this creature - what are we doing right/what are we doing wrong - just...reveled in it's...phenomenon today.

With egg spirals. As the nudibranch moved away from the eggs, a small snail (Amphissa?) moved in. Maybe it ate some, note sure about this.
Does anyone know why there are air bubbles next to the eggs? They were not on the rest of the rock.