2015-09-13 Nature brought to you by the letter S

This Sunday morning family walk was full of surprises! We started out stopping to watch more than 40 turkey vultures and one coyote scavenge a deer carcass that was in one of the fields. A bit later we encountered a doe and her 2 fawns. Before we traveled down Gato Road to visit the Sister Oak, everyone got to decorate their own hiking stick to use along the way. We looked for things in nature that start with the letter S. We checked out all the spider webs and got to see a tarantula in the entrance of her hole. Some other nature encounters that started with the letter S were: seeds, scats, sycamores, sages, scrub oaks, sticky monkey flowers, snags, stick nests, a skull, scorpion holes, stinking gourds and we got to smell the strong aroma of vinegar weed as well as feel things that were soft, scratchy and sticky.   Such a beautiful way to spend time with family and friends out in our local wildlands.