We cut and stacked wood, oak limbs which had accumulated on the ranch over the seasons.
The various slash piles serve as shelter for all manner of life, lizards, snakes, birds, and rodents.
It's a bumper year for acorn mast, which has attracted larger than usual numbers of squirrels and quail.
Otters in Lake County are enterprising animals, which will seek out even the smallest isolated pockets of water to investigate for suitable prey. This one, now mummified, met his end near a fished-out spring-fed koi pond on a remote abandoned homestead.
The feathers of a California quail, a victim of a farm cat.
One of the small sharp-tailed snakes inhabiting the slash piles. An inconspicuous, often subterranean species, it is often unearthed by farmers' plows.
A yearling black tail buck appears each late afternoon to feed on the fallen acorns.
The archetype of a house on an abandoned homestead on a Fall day.
Within a barn on the abandoned homestead.
Chicken scratches.
Domestic geese on their daily trek from Shady Rock Ranch to Two Buck Ranch.
From the Hopland Grade, chaparral forest, Clear Lake, and Mount Konocti.
Sweet gum leaves in the stock tank.
