!!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! 
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More urban nature. Taken six years ago just past sunset at the Point Isabel dog park near Richmond looking toward where San Francisco would be if not covered in fog and low clouds. Mount Tampais is just visible to the right in Marin county. Some sailor somewhere was due for some delight.
Last Friday I took this sunset from Fort Funston beach in San Francisco. Definitely not pristine wilderness. Plantwise the dominant species are invasives. But there are all manner of sea critters and on land coyotes, ravens, rabbits as well as our dogs and horses.
The final bit of nature is this wreath I bought at the cafe next door made by a creative young woman. I just can’t quit looking at it.
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@LM77 wants to see your spider. 
That’s a gorgeous mushroom, and what are you showing us with that twig?
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It doesn’t do justice to the blowing snow – that’s not a smudge. NOAA: “…a northwest wind 30 to 40 mph, with gusts as high as 55 mph.”
It may be a blessing, besides it beauty, in that it might curtail some Christmas gatherings. That would definitely be a good thing in many cases this year!
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The twig was a accidental upload. But it’s the terminal bud of the yucca plant. I do rarely find them. A decade or more can go by before it shoots up buds and flowers.
You can see the yucca behind it. It’s the Yucca filamentosa. Some yucca species may grow for 30+ years before blooming.
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Saw my first cardinal on Hawaii of all places, formerly a popular place to release exotics.
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I love the graceful curves of snowdrifts. I’m also thankful that we only got about an inch… with 60 mph gusts reported in the area.
Winter sky in Nebraska. (Interstate 80 is in the picture, too. 
)
Wintery creek.
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Got up very early this morning and walked at the beach in San Francisco. We walked down to the beach, down a ways and then back up along a horse path before returning along he bluffs above the beach. Not a white Christmas by any means but it still felt good to get outside.
But we got going just before dawn to feed the dogs and the sky was so red I had to hold the camera over the back fence and get a picture of as much of the sky as I could.
Red sky at morning, sailors take warning we used to say. Sure enough it is raining now.
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Southern Black Racer and some pretty mushroom that I don’t know the ID of. Found it earlier today on my hike.
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Gorgeous, especially the mushrooms. (Not you. )
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I agree those mushrooms are exquisite. The snake is pretty impressive in its own right, @SkovandOfMitaze
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Yeah it was a cool find. Normally I can’t catch these snakes. They are so fast. They strike really fast too and so I can’t ever get pics but luckily my brother came along. The snakes usually try to bite again and again and so I have always wondered how will I get a pic holding it. It’s too big to hold by just their head and rest the body in my hand. So I need to use both hands to hold it and then that makes getting a picture hard lol. Probably just under 3 feet long.
I feel like pictures never turn out the best with plants and mushrooms. It seems to lose some of its color but they still look really nice. In person the colors were really bright. Nice yellow stalks and caps with some orangish red mixed in. Mushrooms are usually the prettiest thing in winter where I live. These colors reminds me of several of the Boletus mushrooms I see. I believe it’s some kind of waxy cap.
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A couple of guys with respectable racks foraging in 6" of new snow out our north window this evening – it was dusk, so I couldn’t get a better photo:
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Do any of these guys ever make their way into freezer? Sure do look good upright though.
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Not my freezer. A guy who bought a piece of property adjacent to our ribbon but not as wooded is a bow hunter (but he shoots more with a camera) asked to lease the hunting rights. I thought that was a good arrangement. He is actually a conservationist by profession, so he will only cull older animals. There is one big old buck he wants to get – I saw it last year lying down with some younger ones standing nearby.
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Though it’s hard to see the nature through the works of men it’s there. The Gulf of Mexico, the white sand, and a nice 73°f/23°c. Feels good. Just wish that after work in a few hours I still had sunlight until 9pm so I could go swimming and hiking in the sun.
But I did get here earlier and biked 10 miles before work enjoying early minting sun and jogged 4 miles at lunch.
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