August 25, 2015

Where have I seen this guy before?

August 4, 2015

Meet Our Study’s Newest Mountain Lion Kittens!

http://www.nps.gov/samo/blogs/Meet-Our-Study-s-Newest-Mountain-Lion-Kittens.htm

Evybudee sez "SQUEE"

Our newest research subjects are two spotted mountain lion kittens between the ages of three and four weeks old. P-43 and P-44, as the two are known, are from two separate litters on opposite ends of our study area.

P-43 is a young female found in a remote area of the Santa Monica Mountains near Malibu Creek State Park. We've been following her mom, P-23, since she was three weeks old and this is her second litter of kittens. P-23 gained fame a few years back when a motorcyclist spotted her early one morning on top of a deer on Mulholland Highway.

The image below gives you a sense of what these moms are looking for in a den. Many of mom's GPS points are localized in one small area for the first three weeks after she gives birth (which is how researchers know she might have a litter), so our biologist, Jeff Sikich, has a GPS device in hand as he tries to track down the den location.

August 1, 2015

Juana Maria Better-than-Nothing: The Strange Tale of the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island

It was 1853 on San Nicolas Island, the most remote of California's eight Channel Islands. Sixty-five miles southwest of Point Mugu, in Ventura County, one visitor reported the island's "shifting sand dunes, its 90-foot fog shrouded peak, its deep cut canyons, its bleak cliffs and the crashing seas breaking over its rocky shores" made it "just about one of the most desolate places on earth." This isolated isle had once been home to a thriving group of native people known as the Nicolenos. Now it was supposedly uninhabited, though sailors sailing by occasionally reported seeing a human figure waving her arms, running towards them on the foggy shore. In 1853, Captain George Nidever set out on his third trip in search of this legendary apparition.

More at http://www.kcet.org/shows/california_coastal_trail/content/history/juana-maria-better-than-nothing-the-strange-tale-of-the-lone-woman-of-san-nicolas-island.html