Field Notes

The schooner Laura Virginia made history on April 14, 1850, by becoming the first vessel to enter our bay. Captain Douglass Ottinger and his second officer, Hans Buhne, promptly named the bay “Humboldt” after a German naturalist. Three years later, Humboldt Bay gave its name to our county when it was detached from Trinity County. […]

One sign of a healthy pond or wetland is the presence of frogs, right? Well, that depends on the species of frog. Bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) are native to North America east of the Rocky Mountains but have been introduced outside of this range for frog-leg farming and backyard pond-stocking purposes. Bullfrogs can now be found […]

Our corner of the world is on the verge of becoming famous in a new and unprecedented way. The State of California has adopted the most aggressive goals in the country for developing renewable energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Here in Humboldt County, plans are underway to make us a leading player in one […]

The Autumnal Equinox is a few weeks behind us, the nights are getting longer and cooler, and it is a good time to go outside and see some interesting things in the sky. If you go outside around 9 p.m. in the next few weeks and look directly overhead, you will see one of the […]

In the coastal forests of Northern California, the most abundant vertebrates are amphibians such as salamanders and frogs. "Abundance" refers to the total number of animals in a given area, but Northern California is also home to a rich diversity of amphibian species. With around 30 species of amphibians inhabiting the area, one might think […]

Have you ever spent an afternoon exploring the rocky intertidal zone of the Humboldt coast at low tide? If so, you may have wondered to yourself how a thriving ecosystem can exist in such a seemingly unfavorable habitat. Inhabitants of the rocky intertidal include marine invertebrates, which spend their entire lifetime exposed to an extreme […]

Looking at the Andromeda galaxy is looking back in time to when Lucy and her forebears roamed the highlands of present-day Ethiopia, making it the farthest object we can see with the naked eye. It consists of a trillion or so stars, the twin to our own Milky Way galaxy, separated from us by a […]