The Perseid meteor showers reach their peak night, with 50 to 70 falling stars an hour, on Friday, Aug. 12. This year’s viewing is just past the full moon, which provides competing light and makes it hard to see the flashes of meteors, but look east after midnight for a possible sparkle. The full moon brings some morning negative tides just after sunrise.
The recent cool and misty mornings carry a tinge of autumn as the days grow shorter and the hills grow browner. Pops of color are provided by some exotic newcomers. Along the Bear Valley Trail, fiery-orange South African lilies (Crocosmia sp.) are in bloom, with narrow, blade-shaped leaves. At Divide Meadow, the rosy-pink trumpets of belladonna lilies, another South African, are blooming on their slim brown stems. They have a thin frill of leaves at the ground level rising from a softball-sized bulb.
It is full-on huckleberry season amid the Bishop pine forests of Tomales Bay State Park, the seashore’s Bayview Trail and the Inverness Ridge. A healthy snack heading down to the beaches! Those resilient snowy plovers are having a good year, with 22 fledged chicks scurrying around the beaches. One more nest is due to hatch, making the count a better year than 2021. Plovers are continuing to settle into the restored habitat area near Abbotts Lagoon.