A month of blue bellies and sooty shearwaters
It’s time to look for newly hatched western fence lizards, commonly called “blue bellies.” The subspecies we have in Marin is the coast range fence lizard. Their range ends in southern Sonoma County, beyond which the northwestern fence lizard’s range begins.
After mating in the spring, eggs develop inside the female for about three weeks. Observant people often say a female lizard looks pregnant, though actually the word biologists use for “full of eggs” is gravid. Once she lays the eggs in leaf litter, her work is done. The young are on their own when they hatch. They must learn to find food like insects, including ants, flies, spiders and ticks, while avoiding the scorpions, black widows, snakes, jays and hawks that prey on them. At this stage, even males will not have blue on the throat, and the blue belly markings will be light or nonexistent. Since females have three clutches each year, you can continue to see hatchlings as late as September.
Look for coast range fence lizards basking on rocks and logs, climbing walls, scurrying in your garden and — living up to their name — on fences.
Look for coast range fence lizards basking on rocks and logs, climbing walls, scurrying in your garden and — living up to their name — on fences. They can be found in coastal scrub, oak woodlands, chaparral, parks and riparian areas. They especially like sunny spots, where males, females and even hatchlings can be seen doing pushups to announce their territorial claims. If those hatchlings are lucky, they could live six or seven years.
Late summer and early fall are the best times to see an amazing sea bird called a sooty shearwater, as flocks pass through on their 34,000- to 46,000-mile figure-eight loop around the Pacific. These dark brown sea birds nest in burrows on islands near New Zealand. In March, they head north, travel
ing up to 680 miles a day to feed in the far northern Pacific. Young shearwaters make this journey for the first time when they are only 3 months old.
Some sooty shearwaters pass by Japan on their way to the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Bering Sea, and never approach North America. Others can be seen off the California coast from May to July, but the best time to see them is on their southward journey in late August and early September when thousands can be seen streaming by the coast or resting in rafts on thewater.
Often they find food by looking for feeding murres, gulls or even cetaceans. Binoculars, or better yet a spotting scope, will help you to appreciate the vast numbers of these astonishing migrants, which can look like dark clouds or even smoke over the ocean. Despite the large numbers, sooty shearwaters have declined 90% since the early 1990s when flocks of as many as 25,000 birds were seen. In 2018, they were placed on the IUCN Red List as “near threatened.” Climate change affecting the availability of food and over-fishing may be contributing to the decline.
Coastal headlands like Point Bonita and beaches like Limantour are good places to view sooty shearwaters from land with binoculars or a spotting scope, or for a real treat, take a pelagic birding trip to the Cordell Bank.
Wendy Dreskin has led the College of Marin nature/ hiking class Meandering in Marin since 1998, and teaches other nature classes for adults and children. To contact her, go to wendydreskin.com