If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then here are 10,000!
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​Sonoma Land Trust and The Wildlands Conservancy (TWC) are partnering with Felidae Conservation Fund to track wildlife use of our coastal properties (Little Black Mountain, Pole Mountain and Jenner Headlands preserves) as part of their Bay Area Puma Project. The imagery obtained advances our understanding of puma movement and behavior and provides us with better knowledge about the array of wildlife — and humans — that make use of our lands. Here are some images recently collected across SLT and TWC protected lands. Enjoy!

When I was in college at Sonoma State, I had a roommate who had just moved into the dorms from Hawaii. He had rarely, if ever, been to the mainland and chose Sonoma County for his big adventure away from home. He would do some of the things you might expect for someone fresh out of tropical Hawaiian paradise, such as walking to class in a thick parka, gloves and hat on a sunny, 65 degree day, and he would cook with Spam occasionally. But one difference in perspective that I had not expected was illustrated the first time he saw a squirrel.
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“Whoa, is that a squirrel?! It’s a squirrel! Check this out! Did you see him?!”

The last time I flew to Hawaii, I marveled at how far off and isolated from land the island chain is. In fact, it’s the most isolated island chain in the world, being more than 2,000 miles from the nearest continent. While visiting this jewel in the Pacific, I wondered how ancient Polynesian navigators were able to discover this tiny paradise in the midst of a vast ocean, so I did a little research.
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It turns out that the most likely explanation is that a little bird told them about it. In his book, “Voyagers,” the late artist and storyteller Herb Kawainui Kane shares the legend of how ancient Polynesians from islands in the South Pacific followed the migrating Kolea bird — also known as the Pacific Golden Plover — to discover their new home in Hawaii.

One of my favorite things to do in the summertime is to sit in my garden and watch the honeybees swarm all over the borage plants. Borage, or borago officinalis, is a favorite food of honeybees. It grows like a weed, re-seeding itself year after year, requiring no care. As a bonus, the plentiful blue star-shaped blossoms are edible and look pretty in salads.
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All summer long, honeybees are hard at work collecting and storing nectar and pollen for the coming winter. On a hot July day, it’s hard to comprehend that days are actually growing shorter, but the bees know. Though their numbers burgeon in springtime, they begin to decline in summer, slowly at first. In late fall, a small remnant of the colony hunkers down for the winter. They seal themselves inside the hive, using a sticky substance called propolis. All winter long, this small knot of bees keeps each other warm and lives on their stored supplies.