Animal Count

I have seen a couple of animals this past week I have never seen before, and a few others I have seen before.  So to start with the unusual and I wish I had a picture department.

The most unusual was a fox family at the church.  We first saw a grey fox at the Breakfast.  Charity pointed it out to me.  However last Saturday, when we showed up to help clean the church, We saw the whole family, mommy, daddy and three babies.  At first we saw just two babies, but a third jumped out of the tree.  They weren't really scared of us.  The babies weren't tiny babies, but were walking and playing and obviously climbing trees.  One of those days you wished you had a camera.

The other animal I saw for the first time was  California King Snake.  This was on our hike to Little Yosemite with the Normans.  This is in the Sunol Wilderness Area.  I didn't even know about this area, but the Normans invited us for a hike.  We were taking a trail to get by the creek to throw and skip rocks and at first the snake was guarding the trail and no one wanted to go past.  He eventually slithered away through the grass, and I got  bad shot of him as he was in the grass.  However you can see it in this video clip.  www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrlMLGPwHPE  We also saw a golden eagle high in the air, and a turkey vulture flying just over us.  Also saw a wild turkey, but didn't get a picture.

I have seen a deer from the train, but haven't seen the wild turkey I saw last year.  And of course there are the normal birds gong through the Bay Area Wildlife Refuge, ducks and seagulls.  Earlier in the year there were lots of egrets, but not so many lately.  I also saw a jack rabbit from the train.  First time I have seen one from the train, but there were lots of jack rabbits in Utah.  There are often hawks through the Altamont Pass or passing Pleasanton.