Some rain fell in early May, extending the spring season on Sonoma Mountain.
The blacktail deer look healthy (except some have visible ticks -- ick!),
and have produced plenty of fawns.
Bucks are growing antlers in the velvet stage.
At the Adobe Creek crossing, we saw more bobcat activity than usual, both day and night. Then this interesting sequence.
An adult bobcat carries something upstream, larger than the prey we've
seen them carry previously (usually rodents).
Twelve minutes later, it comes back downstream empty-mouthed. Then
seven minutes later it carries another large item upstream.
The closeup reveals it is a mother bobcat carrying two kittens by their
scruff, presumably to relocate their den.
Here she is on the return run, followed by the closeup, and video of her
two upstream carries spliced together.
We also had a healthy looking mountain lion at the creek crossing. This is the first we've seen since December 2025.
We saw a band of feral hogs on the upper mountain meadow at twilight.
A great blue heron came to the creek once again.
We saw the usual array of smaller mammals -- opossums, raccoons, skunks
-- but nothing too photogenic.
We'll let this gray squirrel, which seems to be diving into the leaf
litter, represent the category.
As noted previously, the City of Petaluma is experimenting with
controlled grazing on part of the Lafferty Ranch property.
A herd of cattle from a neighboring property was allowed to graze a couple
of days in late March, then repeated in late April, then again in late
May.
A temporary electric fence restricts them to the upper meadows. We
will revisit this topic as we evaluate impacts on the land and wildlife.
