This is what I do

My basic job description: I go to sites and see what's there. I'm a site sighter. I look at plants, I look at water, I look at landscape features, and, often, I look at the sky. Recently, a day in the field looked like this:

Something about this was odd.

This is a Pacific Tree Frog, which we fondly call Hyla:

These are freakin' coyote holes! Rhonda, a wildlife biologist, enlightened me to this fact while we were out there, and I was amazed. I had no idea where coyotes made their dens. Another interesting point: Rhonda frequently sticks her arm in burrows to see what's inside. I watched with cringing eyes.

And here is the common garter snake. We were hoping it would be the endangered San Francisco garter snake, but it wasn't; it was a far-fetched hope since we weren't in the right area anyway. A word to the wise: garter snakes "musk" as a defense mechanism. It smells really bad, and if you don't wear gloves, it's really hard to get off your hands.

Another common site feature: cowsus obnoxicus. That's our truck up on the ridge surrounded by cattle. They thought our beige truck was the white feed truck and wouldn't leave us alone. We would return to a number of cows licking our bumpers. Hitting the panic button was a tad funny, although definitely not coffee grinder stampede inducing.class dismissed.