Nocturnal Nature with Charles Hood

Nature is so interesting and diverse. If we ignore the nocturnal half, we're ignoring too much of the rest of nature. And so we don't want to just let it be. Oh, I saw hummingbird. That's lovely. You know, I saw a flower. That's lovely. But how about the other kinds of things that are out? 

Michelle Fullner  0:12  
Hello, and welcome to Golden State naturalist, a podcast for anyone who's ever wondered what happens each night after the shadows get longer in the sun dips beneath the horizon. I'm Michelle Fullner. And today we're talking with Charles hood, whose voice you just heard about the things that go bump in the night are actually things that flutter flap, tread softly swim or bloom in the night, because there's a whole nocturnal world out there that most of us are missing. And it's not actually as hard or as scary as we might think, to go out and see it for ourselves. And I was waiting until October to record this spooky season interview. But I'm very excited to tell you that now that this one is recorded all of season three of Golden State naturalist is fully recorded. I have eight more finished interviews after this one that I'm working on turning into episodes on things like California condors, seaweed, and native bees. So make sure to follow the podcast wherever you listen so you don't miss an episode. And if you're enjoying Golden State naturalist and want to see the show grow and thrive and reach more people, I would so appreciate it. If you considered becoming part of the GSN Patreon community for as little as $4 a month for that $4 You get access to video and audio extras from the show which there will be some of for this episode, and you gain access to the patrons only book club. Each month we vote on and read fascinating books about things like coyotes or birds or moss and the way humans interact with those organisms. And then we talk about them with such a good group of human beings who are deeply invested in this beautiful blue.we all call home that $4 A month membership helps more than you know. And I'm grateful for every single person supporting the show because it would not be possible without you. If you'd like to become part of that community or just lend your support to the show. You can find me at patreon.com/michelle Fullner. That's Michelle with two L's and Fullner is fu ll en er you can also rate a review the show on Apple podcasts. I cherish every single review and I'm thankful to every single person who's left one and made my whole day leaving reviews and sharing your favorite episode with a friend are both ways that helped the podcast climb up the podcast charts, which helps more people discover the show which makes me not only super happy but also helps more people learn about this beautiful earth we live on and find out how we collectively can give back to it and be a positive enriching part of nature. If you want to see what my face looks like here, my various nature, musings or observations or follow along on my outdoor adventures, you can find me at Golden State naturalist on both Instagram and Tiktok My website is Golden State naturalist.com Which is where you can find podcast merch like sweatshirts to bundle up in for your next nocturnal adventures. But now let's get to the episode. Charles hood has been a factory worker, a ski instructor, a dishwasher and a nature guide in Africa. He later went on to receive an MFA in poetry from UC Irvine studying under Charles Wright and Louise Glick. He's published 19 books including wild Sonoma with a foreword by Jane Goodall and a salad only the devil would eat which was named the nonfiction book of the year by the editors of foreword book review. Earlier his book wild la which is in its fourth printing was named a nonfiction book of the year by the California association of independent booksellers. Charles is an accomplished birder and experienced World Traveler and nature study has taken him across all 50 states and to 80 countries from New Guinea to Borneo to the South Pole. During these journeys, Charles has encountered 5000 species of birds and over 1000 species of mammals. Along the way he has been lost in a white out in Tibet contracted and survived the bubonic plague and published over 700 photographs. He's currently working on a book of essays about seabirds, a limited edition photography collection, and an article about mink coats his new book Nocturne Alia comes out on Halloween. So without further ado, let's hear from Charles hood on Golden State naturalist.

I met up with Charles hood in early October at the kissoon is River Preserve in Galt, California, about 20 miles south of Sacramento. When I arrived, the sun was still up, but it wouldn't be for long. Birders and hikers were making their way back to their cars packing of binoculars, saying goodbye to friends and driving off before the gates could be locked and their cars forfeited to the lot for the night. I got more than a few curious glances at this point, as mine was the only car driving into the lot rather than out of it at this hour. Maybe my fellow Nature enthusiast thought my turn of the century Corolla puttered in for some nefarious purpose. Or maybe they wanted to give me a friendly warning about the gate policy and keep me from getting stuck. But they never got the chance to express either thought because as I pulled into a space Charles, who had arrived earlier was already flinging open the door of his car and making his way over to welcome me after we'd said hello and I had moved my car to the street. I jumped into the passenger seat of Charles's car, we still had a little time before sunset, and we set out in search of some Sandhill Cranes Charles had seen earlier in the day,

Charles Hood  5:32  
the light is just fabulous as it as it hits there. We're getting into that golden hour. So there's a flooded field here that's reflecting the blue sky and the golden lights coming from behind it because they're driving east.

Michelle Fullner  5:42  
We saw a lot of birds. Oh,

Charles Hood  5:44  
these are demonstrators in greater yellowlegs and lesser yellowlegs and some shovelers and some killed deer. We

Michelle Fullner  5:51  
also saw plenty of Canada geese, Redwing blackbirds, eat grits and a group of large low flying birds.

Charles Hood  5:58  
Those are all sandhill cranes. Well, those big birds on that. Yeah, they're two o'clock heading towards three o'clock. Are you going little birds? I think they are one of their own geese that will be really funny. Because they're going with the other geese. Maybe they work east the whole time. I think they press morgue if I didn't realize this,

Michelle Fullner  6:14  
the birds flew out of sight. So we were never able to tell for sure. But I like to think that they were sandhill cranes, which come to the Central Valley for winter. And if you're having a hard time visualizing these birds, they look a little like Great Blue Herons. But the Cornell Lab of Ornithology says Sandhill Cranes are more uniformly great, and the adults have a vivid red crown that the great blue herons don't have the also fly with their necks outstretched which the great blue parents don't do they tuck their necks. One of the things that makes seeing these birds so special is that sandhill cranes were once down to fewer than five breeding pairs in the Central Valley. They've made quite a comeback from that low bar. But according to Audubon, California, these birds could be doing a lot better. Audubon points out that recovery of the population is hindered by a lack of directed conservation, despite the potential for habitat restoration and farmland management that could greatly benefit this population. So that sucks, but there's still a good chance you could see them this winter, and maybe not too far from where you live. If you're in California. Also, please do yourself a favor and watch a YouTube video of their courtship dance. But as we drove the roads of the preserve admiring the birds, the sun started to sink a little lower on the horizon. In the golden light, Charles and I knew that we were about to watch the world change entirely. And it looked like we were going to be the only ones present to witness

Charles Hood  7:35  
it. Now the great thing about being out at the end of the day is everybody else is going home. And the reserves are emptying out. And as we know, because I asked earlier, it's legal to be here after hours, even though the parking lot closes, that don't mind pedestrians, so suddenly you end up with a nature preserve. That's all just for you.

Michelle Fullner  7:52  
As everyone else was leaving Charles and I parked along the road and walked into the preserve to see what was stirring and to discuss vampire bats, night blooming native plants, what's going on in the ocean at night and so much more, all of that after a quick break.

Today on Golden State naturalist we're talking nocturnal nature with Charles hood. We're picking up where we left off during golden hour, but we look

Charles Hood  8:52  
to the west the sunlight is coming through the bottom of an oak tree and through the willows, and it's just absolutely magnificent golden, refracted light, not Sun burning me not giving me skincare.

Michelle Fullner  9:04  
And as Charles and I entered the preserve crossing woodenbridge over a slew and into an open field bordered by oak, cottonwood and willow trees, we found that we had the place completely to ourselves, or at least we were the only humans in sight. Because this late afternoon, early evening time is a particularly active one for wildlife, like the rabbit we saw under the oaks and the turkeys. We stopped to watch roaming the preserve

Charles Hood  9:30  
and it's fun to see them coming out. It's a little bit later from our earlier conversation. So the sun's really gonna kiss the horizon pretty fast here and so it's getting to be sort of dusky here inside the preserve and the turkeys feel safe enough to start coming out at dusk apparently, because I was here earlier there weren't any turkeys anywhere and they were out on the road and they're here. So presumably they're worried about being predated by Bob Katz, I assume but these are not native. They were introduced from the East Coast. This is a native North American bird but not native to California. So introduced for hunting purposes, as was the case often so I don't think they cause any mayhem or harm to anybody that I'm aware of. They're just out doing their thing.

Michelle Fullner  10:05  
They seem more traceable to dinosaurs than do yes, they

Charles Hood  10:08  
do. They have the but the nice kind of not the kind that you use or the nice pleasant.

Michelle Fullner  10:13  
Okay, I had to look this up and Charles is right. There are no long term studies showing negative ecological impacts by wild turkeys. But according to a blog by Scientific American, they might be causing harm, and some scientists think they are but the question just hasn't been studied appropriately because adequate funding and attention haven't been given to the issue. Also, well, these current turkeys aren't native to California. There used to be native turkeys here they were a little smaller than the turkeys we have now. And their bones are actually the second most common bird bones found in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, which I did an episode about. So make sure to check that out. If you want to know about ice age, California, and pygmy mammoths. Anyways, these smaller native turkeys went extinct and no one is sure why, but it could have been due to a decrease in rainfall and vegetation. I'll link that blog post in the show notes in case you want to learn more about California Turkey ecology. Okay, but Charles said that the turkeys probably felt safe is coming out at dusk. What is that called? So creatures that are most active at dawn and dusk. Like these modern day avian dinosaurs are called crepuscular rather than nocturnal, like those active at night or diurnal, like the daytime critters. And fun fact dawn and dusk are great times to go to the zoo and to go outside to spot wildlife because a lot of animals are crepuscular. Next, we followed a path across a wooden bridge that led us into a bit of forest that looked decked out for Halloween all around us. What looked like cobwebs drooped from bare twigs, and I'm very taken with these. Is this cottonwood like fluff or is it spiderwebs? Yeah,

Charles Hood  11:55  
you're asking what the dander is because the trees in this little section. It's almost like a hobbit Lord of the Rings kind of forest thing. It's a mix of Cottonwood dander and willows actually give up a lot of dander too. And they are adhering to scraps of liken and perhaps a little scrap of iron web as well. So this sort of gossamer fluff is a mixture of

Michelle Fullner  12:14  
ingredients it's good October ambiance for sure.

Charles Hood  12:17  
Well, yes, it's very you know that people put that shredded spiderweb stuff on their houses, but they could just come here and get the real stuff for free and try

Michelle Fullner  12:25  
and help propagate Willow and cottonwoods by the way that fake spider webs stuff ensnares wildlife and kills lots of birds, reptiles and insects every October. So if you have a willow or cottonwood tree nearby, you can artfully place the fluff around your yard, or just stick to the many other creepy decoration options available to you. At this point, the sun had set and last light wasn't far off. Charles and I were almost ready to sit down in the dark for our interview. But there was one thing we wanted to do first

Charles Hood  12:56  
was pray for the bath walk back to that other bridge.

Michelle Fullner  13:00  
It's starting to get a little darker now.

Charles Hood  13:02  
So I know Miguel ordinato talked about pets when he was on the podcast with you and season two,

Michelle Fullner  13:07  
can I just say Charles went above and beyond while preparing for this interview. He was familiar with basically every topic I've covered before on the podcast and made sure to talk about different stuff. So even though we talk about bats again, here, it doesn't overlap very much with the other episode, I aspire to that level of preparedness. And if you do want to go back and listen to the other episode with bats at some point, it's part two of the urban ecology episodes with Miguel orden Jana who's shown a very surprising quantity and diversity of bats in urban LA.

Charles Hood  13:38  
So I'll just kind of remind the listeners real quick, North America, we're sort of in that 4547 species, California is about 25 species. And so we think you know, places like Los Angeles, that's Hades you know, Los Angeles and Hades are one of the another different off ramps on the same freeway. And yet, as Miguel is proving there are bats throughout Los Angeles in the most urban areas that these passive detectors are showing up. And they do live under bridges in the in the 1000s. Even in urban Los Angeles, there are human Myotis bats and Mexican freetail bats living with a 605 freeway crosses the 210 for example, there's about 2000 bats under that bridge. So bats are actually all around us in a really interesting diverse assemblage. And so San Francisco, I'm gonna give you a number I'm gonna say 14 species in kind of the Bay Area. I'm I might be off by two or three, but I'm certainly more than 10 and less than 20. And Hey, isn't that pretty cool?

Michelle Fullner  14:29  
That's amazing.

Charles Hood  14:30  
So we will remind our listeners 1% of the bats out there might have rabies. In my case, I've had my rabies shot. So when I handled bats, I'm in pretty good shape. If you find a bat falling up that's on the ground, foaming and riding around don't pick it up. Nature chip, you're so glad you listen to this podcast and get these really essential that you never would have known that. It's acting really strange don't pick it. And when you look at the statistics of how people get rabies, it's from dogs, raccoons, foxes, possums, like the bats are never the problem.

Michelle Fullner  14:59  
There. More rabies information in the second urban ecology, episode two, but Miguel and I met up during the day in Griffith Park. So we didn't actually get to see any bats. While we talked about them going to a wildlife preserve at dark in an area with a bunch of mosquitoes and mobs flying around was a very different story. Most

Charles Hood  15:16  
bats but not all, most bats are hunting at using their echolocation frequencies far beyond the human range of hearing. And so what we do is we use a little microphone that plugs into an iPhone, and it's literally just called a bat detector. And one of these classic it is what it is now a little bit expensive. But they also have them for both Android and for for iPhones, and it translates the bat calls to a range of sound that is audible to humans, and then makes a sonogram and you can record it, and then it'll give you an identification. And you could also then cross reference that identification with computer software. So in the magic of radio, a little bit of time has elapsed, and it's getting darker. Oh. I'm holding the microphone up to the microphone. So we're here at this little slew it's getting really mosquitoes Unfortunately for us, but luckily for them, bats, one that can eat 600 mosquitoes an hour, although another sources 1000 mosquitoes an hour, maybe that second source didn't like mosquitoes as much or whatever. Or maybe the both answers are true in all bats, all 1472 species in the world, second most diverse group after rodents, all bats are flying with their same hand that you and I have. So their wing bones and their finger bones are finger bones and their wing bones are one of the same. So bats don't get in your hair, they can see you know, they're not interested in us. They're not going to harm us they're doing great service. Near here is the Yolo bypass and you're Davis, California. And there are 250,000 Mexican freetail bats living in that bridge complex. And they are eating tons, literally tons of insects a night that mean that there can be organic rice farming in that floodplain and no pesticides, because the bats are providing the pesticide service, the amount of money they're saving the farmers and the amount of health of the ecosystem that they're providing by not you know, they don't take so many insects that it populates it. They're sort of harvesting that surplus. And it means that we're not putting all that pesticide into the into the waterway into the system. It is true there is a thing called a vampire bat, but it's not here in North America. And it doesn't attack people anyway. If you're a very drowsy cow, it's going to take a little pinch a little pinch of blood. They exist but they're not a thing, really. The 1014 73 species of bats only three eat blood and two of those three eat bird blood, they find roosting birds and are saying and taking that way and then the vampire bat that takes mammalian blood, it actually approaches on the ground usually so it was a pig or a cow or a taper, you know or a monkey or something sleeping, and it drops down near and then scuttles up close on very adroit legs and wing bones with thumb bones. And then super sharp scalpel sharp incisors and anticoagulant saliva, you don't even know that you've been bitten. And that laps up the blood and then departs. And the issue for farmers is the amount of blood is a trivial amount, but the wounds can get infected. If you have multiple bites on a large animal is living its own filth, as you know, as people raise their farm animals the wrong kind of way. So they you know, that's where the reputation gets so bad. It would fit in the palm of your hand really. And if it truly if you were sleeping in the rain forest, you had bare feet sticking out of your tent, which would get bitten by mosquitoes. Why would you do that? But if you did, it could land on you and bite your toe and you wouldn't wake up. incision would be so adroitly done, and the anticoagulant would be so so you might notice a wedding and I've done I stubbed my toe, and I went to the bathroom last night, what happened here? And you asked me, How do I know what it feels like to be bitten by a vampire? Because my my colleague and I, Jose Gabrielle, we, we do catch them in photography, and we have a permit in Nicaragua. And so I didn't get bitten. Actually, he did because he had the misfortune to be handling the vampire bat the day it was we're trying to do the photograph, but it's just reacting the way you know, if you picked up a dog off the street, it's not going to turn around like we are picking up a cat off the street like yeah, let me go. I don't like Vampire Bats just like Hey, who are you and why are you molesting me? Yeah, and it just turned around and bit him and he didn't even know until he felt the blood trickling down his arm because the bite was so spin the incision was so skillforce So scalpel like and he's like why is my arm all wet? Oh, it's my own blood. The backdrop bit me? Yeah. And then he dropped the vampire bat and it's going all the way across the floor of the of the little work area. The little little shack we're in in Nicaragua. They fly to to get around but they prefer to they're very interested around base bath.

Michelle Fullner  19:34  
As Charles pointed out, vampire bats don't live here in California. The northernmost part of their range is in northern Mexico, and they extend down through Central America and about two thirds of the way down into South America into Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. But what bats were we hearing on the bat detector and seeing swoop over our heads at the consume this River Preserve? That night Charles captured four species on his bat detector, you might notice Mexican freetail bats, hoary bats, and big brown bats, of which I think the hoary bat is the cutest because they're the fluffiest. And if you're as taken with the bat detector as I am, you might also be curious about other cool equipment that can help you interact with nature at night. Charles recommends a few things like a good quality LED flashlight with a rechargeable battery, and a headlamp that has the option for red light, so it doesn't bind everyone you're with and make you lose your night vision. He also says that infrared scopes can be great for spotting animals at night, but that they're expensive and can also pick up things like rocks that have been out in the sun, so they aren't perfect for every situation. Two more items, he recommends a spotlight which is a super powered flashlight that lets you spot wildlife, including the reflections from their eyes from far away. And finally, a UV flashlight, which will make some creatures including scorpions glow neon in the dark. So this of course reminds me of what Griff Griffith said about Humboldt flying squirrels that glow pink in UV light in the redwood tree episode. And Charles even mentions those guys. In his new book, Nocturne Alia, where he writes, we now know that there are mammals that glow in the dark, including flying squirrels in North America and the platypus in Australia, there may be more than just these nobody has checked in any systematic way. If you discover a glowing animal, let the rest of us know. And if you're hearing about all this cool gear and thinking, that's nice, Michelle, but there's no way I'm going out into the wilderness at night to get eaten by a puma. I get it. It's especially scary if it's not something you do all the time. But I would like to present you with some numbers. The wilderness and Environmental Medicine website reports that approximately 177 deaths are caused by animal attacks per year in the United States. It doesn't say how many of those occurred at night, but I'm guessing it's considerably less than all of them. In contrast, Charles reminded me that almost 43,000 people died in car crashes in the US in 2021. That's almost 118 deaths per day in this country. Charles, we'll talk more about safety later. But I just want to say that nothing in the world is entirely safe. But there are almost always actions we can take to make things safer. And regardless of the time of day or night, it's always smart to go out with a buddy to make sure someone who isn't with you knows where you're going to have a functioning GPS device, carry water, food and a warm layer in your backpack in case your trip lasts a little longer than expected. Stay on the trail and research the area where you're going before you go. Charles would add to that list that you should always carry at least two light sources just in case one stops working or the battery dies. So your safety is your responsibility and you should take it seriously. But you should also know that going out into nature at night is probably not as risky as the drive to get to that nature area. And the rewards of being there are great. At this point, Charles and I made our way down a dark path using his ultra bright LED flashlight to look for creatures along the trail accidentally flushing an owl out of a tree at one point and soon arriving at a picnic table just off the main trail. We switched off the flashlight and let our eyes adjust to the darkness almost well and truly dark now. Yes,

Charles Hood  23:21  
we're getting very close to the proper nighttime. Yeah, it's

Michelle Fullner  23:25  
that time of night when you get the eerie silhouettes of the oak trees which I think is my favorite time of night. Because you can still see this is perfect for spooky season. Oh right in the spooky season now and I'm loving the gnarled these are I think Valley oaks hard to tell in the dark but they look like the right shape. And I saw a lot of Valley oaks earlier. So he's kind of gnarled branches and leaves and you're starting to see stars come up behind them but they're still really starkly silhouetted against the sky. And as we're sitting here I'm just curious, Charles, how do you get interested in nature to begin with, but then also in what's going on at night?

Charles Hood  24:06  
I was lucky that I grew up at a time when children were not very supervised. And I don't mean that anything pejorative it just it was normal, you know be backed by be backed by dinner, you've got a bicycle be backed by don't get arrested and be backed by dinner. Yep. And so I grew up in Los Angeles along the Los Angeles River and so I could see what I call frogs there actually were toads actually, you know, but I went away No, and snakes and I could go to the LA Zoo as a child without parental supervision. I just ride my bike there pay my 50 cents to get in and draw the wild animals. I had a little pencil kit in my backpack and you know with colored pencil kit, and just explore and then on Sundays, just like your guests, Miguel or to Nana. Sunday's I went to Griffith Park, and we had a very cooperative neighborhood mom who would drop the kids off at one part and then we would hike and then end up at a payphone in Hollywood or wherever on the other side of the park and call I'm trying to describe where we were in Chicago. very gracious. Gracious. GPS to Yeah, I mean, this is all like, I don't even know how we knew where we were we read the street signs, just trying to figure out, okay, we think we're in Hollywood Mom, can you come pick us up? And I suppose if my parents knew all that I was getting into and going into the coverts, and kind of things, you know, they might have been a little more upset. But it was a different era, we were allowed to just encounter it. So I was lucky. But I ended up being as you are an English teacher, just because things worked out that way. A lot of choices. I thought I worked for the park service, and it never happened. And, you know, I mean, ultimately, you need a job. And I was actually working in university, it was undergraduate. And so I found I could get A's and language classes faster than I can get A's in terms of, I won't say that I wasn't reading the material and just faking it. But I might have been just making my way through those term papers. It was easy to do that. And I could do it my geology classes or my geography classes. So I just fell into English, but I've always been interested in nature the whole time. And then once I started birding, then that gets you out all the time, and you want to go to every habitat in every continent. So I maybe I'm your only guest who has been to the South Pole. Oh, I'll tell your listeners.

Michelle Fullner  26:08  
I don't I know anyone who has been in the South Pole. A little piece of paper. So

Charles Hood  26:12  
I was in graduate school, I'd been living in my car, I'd had some hardships in their life as in graduate school, I'd gotten you know, a job and I'd gotten an apartment things were okay. But I wanted to get a pat down to Guinea to go birdwatching because I just got into hardcore birding, and there's no way I could afford to fly to Australia, New Guinea. So I thought I'll fill out a little piece of paper and see what happens. So I applied for a Fulbright in translation of tribal poetry ethno poetics. And as one of my professors said, he was sponsoring me be careful, you may have to go. So I went to New Guinea. And so that goes on. Yeah, so I how I have been to the South Pole, because I fill out a piece of paper, and when, as an artist and residents, that kind of thing. Oh, my goodness. So I'm always trying to balance you know, being a dad and being a good spouse and being a somewhat good employee some of the time, you know, versus wanting to be out in nature. And so I really wanted to not only do a book that writes about nature after dark, but show nature after dark photographically in new ways. So I do work with a fabulous person, Jose, Gabriele Martinez Fonseca, and we take all this fashion lighting equipment to the jungle, because we want to wrap the bat that we catch bats in a net. And that's a whole separate research project. But we have a bat in the hand, and we take pictures of the bat with a macro lens, that wrapping the light around the bat with softboxes. As if you are shooting a fashion shoot, and we do it intentionally with the same equipment in the same we actually look at fashion magazines have been like that shot that's really beautiful. Because we don't want people to have that sense of bats or fears. The only problem is like with bats in flight, they echolocate. When you release a bat, you kind of get in that and you've got the camera set up and you release, you take a picture there echolocating to get oriented and their teeth show so it's a little bit tricky to get a shot with a bat looks normal, but it's not kind of like snarling because we read teeth as aggression even though they're simply opening their you know, it's like we're getting a dental cleaning, you're not trying to bite the dentist, right? You're just simply trying to get your cleaning so they're just echolocating but their fangs are showing so it's a little tricky on those.

Michelle Fullner  27:58  
I've seen these photos in the book Nocturne Alia and they are gorgeous. Charles sent me some to post on Instagram, and I'll put those up within the next week or so. Okay, so when you talk about night, when you're thinking of nocturnal creatures, how are you defining night? Are you including dawn and dusk? or Yes, or what's your kind of definitely,

Charles Hood  28:18  
I'm very casual about that. And there are the terms we put them in the book even about nautical twilight, which is there are terms that you need, legally in terms of when the hunting day can start and when aircraft need their running lights on. So there are distinctions between civil twilight and nautical twilight and astronomical twilight. But they're irrelevant to the rest of us. If you're not actually in court trying to explain why you weren't poaching that deer that we just saw a few minutes ago. And so I really think of night as the footprints that I see at 10. The next morning, you know, the Puma tracks that I've come across, since Puma tracks four times this summer, so Wow. And so it's the idea that when the world is asleep, things are still happening. And really interesting things are still happening. So for example, we're used to thinking of hummingbirds as being pollinators. And of course they are, there's 250 species of hummingbirds in the world. So you want to get pollinated hummingbird is a good thing to attract. But at the same time, if you're attracting a hummingbird or A or a B, or A beetle or something, and you're out in the daytime, all the other plants in the world are out there in the daytime too. So if you want to actually try to have a little more singular connection with your pollinator, it might be better for your genetics to be pollinated at night. So they've got a different shape flower, it's white, probably a kind of bell shape and kind of large. And like if you're a saguaro cactus, and they're entirely back pollinated, that's the only way to have a swirl cactus and have a bat come to it. Being out at night is great because you're not wasting your water you it's very high energy to put a flower out of your out of your body and it's just like it is to make children out of your body. Energy affects your whole day and your whole your that whole year. So, so the swirl does not want to waste time making flowers that are going to wilt. So there's no point to having a flower out in the daytime if you're a cactus, it's really great. And then meanwhile, they have developed a really deep flower with a great amount of nectar. So this is its energy. It costs a lot of energy to make this nectar but the bat has this long basil, it is hovering and it has to put its whole head deep inside the soil flower.

Michelle Fullner  30:22  
Are there any other plants that stand out as plants that bloom at night any particularly anything in California that I'm

Charles Hood  30:28  
sure everybody has seen this plant and they met probably know the name, it's called de tierra is it goes by the genus name, but it's also called Local weed, or Jimson. Weed. You know, there's different folk names and it's a highly toxic plant. So we're gonna say on the record here, nobody mess with this plan. It has a reputation of being hallucinogen, but it's also a fatal who has an agenda to be the last acid trip you ever take.

Michelle Fullner  30:48  
deterra is a member of the nightshade family, which is a family with a lot of toxic plants in it, but also some edible plants like tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and potatoes and wild eater. It is deadly poisonous when used incorrectly, it has been used medicinally and for religious purposes by a lot of cultures around the world. Some people even call it sacred deterra in India, it's given as an offering to the gods Shiva and in North America, several indigenous groups have used it for ceremonial purposes. Does that mean that I'm telling you to go out and ingest this plant? No, it does not. But

Charles Hood  31:25  
they they really like to stir up soil. And so it's a low looks like a pumpkin, like a domestic pumpkin vine with these big white showy flowers and the flowers will last into the daytime and they'll be pollinated by bees, but it's primarily being pollinated by sphinx moths. That is when again when you see a large white flower, it's easy to see in the moonlight kind of thing. So all the data in the world as there's both old and new world species, they are night pollinators. I will say that with a footnote, as far as I know, they're all night pollinated by others. It may be one in India that isn't but I don't know. Anyway, the deterra here in California that you see on disturb roadsides especially in the desert but they do occur here the Chaparral here, you do see him in the Sacramento area. So they are waiting for the for these large they call them hummingbird moths. They're really a large size. And they too have the this ratio of tongue to head as astounding. The longest tongue of any insect is on a stinks moth. So little two inch moth can have a 13 inch tongue. And so it coils up just like a party favor or something you know like it. And the same thing with the nectar eating bats their tongue coils in there, and then like a woodpecker too, for that matter. But you know, you really need to have a super duper kind of tongue how we got a picture of a bat's tongue in my book was we went to southeastern Arizona, Jose and I did and we got the bats coming into a hummingbird feeder. And then we just closed that off. And we had gotten test tubes and I made this elaborate false flower to put around the testing but then it fell apart. You know, I did a really terrible crap job. I'm not Etsy is not calling on my door. Make fake flowers for for early bird feeders like that is not my thing. Apparently, the flower just kept falling off. But the bats are perfectly intelligent. They could they can see perfectly well they knew we had put the vector in the tattoo, we know it's going Yeah. And so they would come and hit the test tube and they didn't mind. So we had a flash on a macro setup. So you'll look in the book. And as in the book nocturnal Yeah, you'll see this great view of the tongue of the bat coming into a clear glass test to that that's clamped to the to the little railing and the tongue of the bat is covered in pipe cleaner like corrugations, if you ever made little paths out of pipe cleaners that's identical to this. So when it doesn't hover like a hummingbird really great. It's kind of coming to a stall like an airplane kind of breaking through a stall hits the hits hummingbird feeder in less than a second, and then peels away like a kind of a plane leaving a dogfight. And for those listeners who can't see me and my hands are doing the motion right now, but in that half a second, the tongue is slurped up a huge amount of liquid and all the little regard cities along the along the tongue of the bat. And so I just love the idea that I'm out looking. And you can see the smiles during the day sometimes. But typically, they're nocturnal. And so I'm out in the desert. And I can see these things. And just to think here's an animal that is doing a useful service as pollinating nature, but also it's just got this wonderful adaptation. And you think about how all the little twists and turns of genetics that ended up with that animal having that particular skill set, so to speak. And we just think about the great, magnificent complexity of nature, and then not just nasty little things to get around the porch light, the balls that are actually doing something kind of cool and kind of interesting in their pollination. That's what I say, anyway,

Michelle Fullner  34:28  
I love it. And do you notice a particular time of year that you really like to be out at night seeing what's seeing what's active. Unlike

Charles Hood  34:35  
some of your listeners, I do live in the desert. And so I like summers, but only in the evenings. And, you know, obviously their animals are attracted to warm cold blooded animals are tricky to warm roads. So I do actually have a truck that I drive at night in the desert and actually have snake hooks in the back of the trucks that they see a rattlesnake. I'm going to carefully move it off the pavement so it doesn't get squished, you know, and I make sure I don't get bitten the both both things are equally Important. We both people need to do their respective kind of thing. So I just love and seeing the kangaroo rats and seeing the Milky Way which in the Northern Hemisphere, we see the Milky Way best in the summer. Yeah, just the way we're oriented in the space. And to know that I'm looking up at something that is millions and millions of miles across millions and millions of years old and get infinitely beautiful. That's something you were talking about in your other podcast, right? Just the sheer gorgeous city the magnificence of this spectacle. If you'd like to go see a waterfall in Yosemite, if you'd like to see the sunset on the beach. Well, guess what the Milky Way is equally interesting and moving in. And deep in the terms of, you're looking into deep sky but also deep and how it touches your heart. So for me, I love summers and then that's when the balls are out. And that's when the bats are out. That kind of thing. If we're gonna go out at night, in the winter, actually, you know, the coastal redwoods. It's cold and it's trippy. And it's cool. But shrews are active around I mean, they don't hibernate, deer active year round. They don't hibernate, raccoons, Pumas. I mean, all these kinds of things. I think some of your listeners probably would like to see a Puma and I'm here to say that, you know, I've seen a few at this point. And Jose Gabriele just saw his first one. And really, it's a matter of spending time. I mean, he's just like, how do you see birds we go birdwatching? How do you see people go? You don't even have to go hiking at night to spend time in nature. And then you'll begin to accumulate these kinds of experiences.

Michelle Fullner  36:22  
And I'm really curious about people who burn at night. Talk to me about nocturnal birding, what is happening with that? What are people hoping to see, there

Charles Hood  36:32  
are 100 Night jars in the world. And so for the listeners who are more plant people than bird people, so you know what an owl is, it's a vertical animal. There's 2050 owls in the world. But there are these more horizontal night birds, strictly night birds almost always. And they live on dirt roads, for example. And they are like flycatchers. Like, if you've ever seen a black Phoebe in a park or something, they are sitting in wait predators, and then they Sally up and grab them off, and then come back down. They could sit up fence posts, and so on. So that would be like with her Wills, poor wills, Paracas in Texas, and so on, and is 100 of those around the world. There's term 50 owls. And then there are other kinds of things out there in night as well. There are po twos, I don't know if you know that word and frog mouse. So a PO two is like, kind of like a cross between an owl and a cat. I don't know. It's got this huge.

Michelle Fullner  37:23  
I mean, you've seen a picture of this big round,

Charles Hood  37:24  
huge round eyes just next round, and hardly any beak you can't hear. Where's the beak? It's like this great garbage grinder mouth. Oh, my goodness. And they look at a picture of that. Yes, he put one put great post two in the in the in the quarter notes. And they look like during the day that was like a like a fence post or a tree stop or something like and at night they still do to bear eyes reflect

Michelle Fullner  37:46  
Okay, I just Googled po two, which is spelled p o t o and it does not look real. Like if I saw a taxidermied po two, I would be like, Wow, what a weird mashup of variously sized burn pieces they've thrown together in this children's surrealist art project that I'm looking at. Because the eyes in the mouth in particular, just do not align with other things that are real, I'm gonna need you to look up a picture so you don't think I'm crazy. And also look up night jars while you're at it because they're very cute.

Charles Hood  38:18  
So we had that flashlight we were using a moment ago, I could see a pole to half a mile away easily, you know, along the edge like along the river edge or if there's a field in the in the dense rainforests are a lot harder to come across. But here's if there's like a road cut through a forest or some area where there's a natural tree fall because of a tropical storm or fancy that was kind of a little harsh or something. Yeah, you scan the edge of that and you'll pick up the pole to and it's got this great growling kind of cone and the old world species is called Frog mouth frog mouth. So poachers are in the New World and frog vessel in the old world. So there's owls there are night chars. And then there's just these really bizarre things. There is an eco locating cave living nightbird and this is in South America. It's called the oil bird oil barons because they're so full of fat you can kill them and make a torch out of them. Oh, humans, I'm so sorry to be one of them. But anyway, the oil bird is a cave dwelling, night flying fruit, eating a barent like char and even nature by the way they because they draw the night is from the European they're met anyway. So like whimper wills and poor whales or nightjars. And so the oil bird of South America flies out at night and is eating fruit. It's eating little round pegs and things coming back to nest and colonially roost in caves, and the echolocate inside the cave to get around. Like there are bad they become really quick. That is cool. That is just to my mind. They're bright. They're sort of a bright red if you catch them in the torch. Like when I saw one of Ecuador, I was just so happy. Oh, you know, I was taking night birding way past the great horned owl on the edge of the city park you know, that kind of thing. And then things like Nighthawks there are two of them. Erricka well to regularly seen in North America, Mr. Nighthawk and common Nighthawk, and you'll see them around like a baseball diamond in the summer they're hooking insects around, you can see them on the Las Vegas strip in Las Vegas, that they're getting lights around the casino, you know the mobs around the lights around the casinos, or around the lights around the stadium. So they have a narrow wing like a kestrel on older white wing flash and they're not turned on nest on the ground and blah blah blah. So why do birds go out at night? Because there's stuff to see all kinds of cool stuff to see I mean of course mocking birds are calling at night and you know so in California we have poor wills and they're typically to kind of open rocky areas but we also have whisper wills and and they make this call that sounds like the proverbial rubber wheel winner we only hear them and kind of the saw the country western songs you know, are you so lonesome you could cry, the song of the weapon wheel and Hank Williams kind of song. I

Michelle Fullner  40:51  
grew up with a Randy Travis song that has Ripper wills in it and I cry every time I listen to it. It's

Charles Hood  40:56  
just to my mind, it's fun to hear them. And if I don't see them, that's fine. But you can you know, if you drive a back road and shine your light along the side of the road, you might see a skunk you might see ringtail cat might see a kangaroo rat you might see a poor Well, yeah, and

Michelle Fullner  41:10  
have you seen ringtail cats? Yeah, repealed cats.

Charles Hood  41:12  
You know are you did a podcast on Sutter. That's good for ringtail Are you somebody right around hell poor town, the town of El portail right when the road is going to leave the last hotel go up into the park that little with a flat starts to climb along the river. That's good for ringtail Madera Canyon in southeastern Arizona is good for ringtail. So I've seen 10 of them or whatever. Wow. So they're not you know, I've not actually been to Sutter Buttes during the daytime, but I haven't looked through them. And they're, they're supposed to be a really good place. Right?

Michelle Fullner  41:39  
It is I went on a trapping a little trapping expedition, and we didn't catch any. And I think that their numbers are declining in their research or that I have been talking to is concerned about them. So

Charles Hood  41:50  
will tell your listeners he will say ringtail, you go to the town of El portail somebody's National Park and look around at night with a flashlight or with a thermal imaging scope SP nighttime, you know, for the most part, yeah. So if you want to see what they are gettable. And of course, I've seen them in Anza Borrego, you know, they are part of nature. It's just a great people weren't looking.

Michelle Fullner  42:06  
Yeah. And you have to know what to look for and be there at the right time. Yeah.

Charles Hood  42:10  
And you have to see, I mean, yeah, I was out looking for kangaroo rats in Anza Borrego State Park and down by San Diego. And just when I see something skipping around the rocks, I know what I'm looking for. It's got Oh, it's got a long black and white tail. It's got good eyesight. It's very slinky looking. I know what that is.

Michelle Fullner  42:27  
Totally, I got a few listener questions for you, too. So Eric wants to know about outdoor lighting. And we did I did talk about this a little bit in another episode, but I would love just there's no problem with reiterating a little bit about this, he said is outdoor lighting, for example, parking lots, streetlights, security lights, harmful to nocturnal animals and insects. If so, what can we do to reduce the impacts of outdoor lighting on wildlife? And

Charles Hood  42:51  
the answer was in your other podcast, and the real reality is, I like the idea of turning the lights off once most people are done with a parking lot, you know, 12 at night, not many people are out at the mall, we could dim the lights by half and we would be doing good. And one issue about bringing bats into like eat the malls around, we could say oh look at attracting the boss and then the basket teeth tomatoes. But first of all, in the tropics, bats are eaten by other bats. When they're flying around a poor flight they're actually very vulnerable to being predated by larger bats. So as says artificially putting them at risk, that kind of thing. And it's changing their social profile in terms of how they normally interact with each other or where they normally go to get water. I think the more we mess with nature, the less good it is for us as inhabitants of nature. We don't know the consequences like if I took 20 bolts out of your car one of those bolts is necessary to keep the steering column and we don't know which boat we're kind of removing at a lobby you know lobby your city council let's save some money my taxes are too high. Let's try to reduce the lighting reusing so it's everything that was in that other podcast and our encourage your listeners to follow the end of that at the end of that episode I think but you all the common sense thing point lights down don't turn lights on and you don't need like we're sitting here in the dark and we're doing fine. No one No Poulos, is he actually lovely like yes, it is so lovely. And no Puma has eaten us all evening.

Michelle Fullner  44:09  
Right? We're still here no

Charles Hood  44:11  
rattlesnakes to come flying up the trees and laughter No, my nose.

Michelle Fullner  44:14  
Okay, so Maya, I think it's Maya. Maybe it's Mia is wondering about nocturnal life in the sea? Or how nocturnal animals interact with bodies water? Are there exclusively nocturnal animals that live partially or exclusively in the water in California? Yes.

Charles Hood  44:30  
For that question, and you get into a really interesting, this has got a little bit of a complicated answer. So in the ocean in general, now we realize there's lots of oceans it's a big planet, but but in the ocean, the largest migration of all life on the planet happens every day in the ocean. And what happens in the ocean is of course, the sunlight is at the top and that's where the things are going to photosynthesize. So we're going to have the circle of life kind of thing. We got to have plankton up at the top and the top layer and then the things that are eating Other things that are eating them. So the density of things we want to eat are up at the top. So if we're a squid, we'd like to be at the top, but we can't be at the top during the day, because we're easily perceived by pelicans and albatrosses, plunge diving boobies and dolphins. And so in the ocean speaking broadly, there's a whole category of life hanging out in the dark about will say 300 meters down, sort of tuned. So a couple 100 feet down. So sort of 500 is six out of seven and 800 feet down, waiting for it to be night and they know their photosensors know they can tell. So now suddenly, it's night. And this massive trophic uplift takes the elevator up to the surface to feed. And we're talking a quantity of life, way beyond any old caribou herd in Alaska, any Sileo will the beasts in the Serengeti, we're talking the entire ocean is coming up. And then of course, there are things waiting to predate those as they pass those things that are sort of living at the sharks and hanging out sort of 300 feet level. They're just waiting to snatch stuff as they go up and down. But so all the squid are up on the surface at night, because that's where they're going to do their feeding. Well then there are nocturnal dolphins, and we don't think of them as nocturnal dolphins because we only go whale watching during the day, right? So you gotta Monterrey and you will see the Grampus is one name for the rizos, Dolphin ri SS o apostrophe s. And they're interesting because they're white ish, depending on the scarring and the age of the individual. That can be a very white, what's called Casper, even when the white is what's called Casper, there is a dolphin, but they seem to be regular dolphins and they're just like us think, well, they're gonna eat a fish and they're nice. They're all playing and socializing. There's the baby in there. There's some of them are doing the breaching and leaping up, oh, it's so fun. And I'm such a great whale watching trip. They have the day off because they're feeding on squid all night. And they're so successful at it, that they can just lounge around during the day splashing and socializing and doing their thing. And they're sleeping too. Of course, as well. There's

Michelle Fullner  46:51  
a pinnacle of Maslow's hierarchy.

Charles Hood  46:56  
So to answer our reader, thank you for asking that question. Various two questions. So is there a nocturnal animal in California that is an ocean animal? Sure, the rizos dolphin is really doing most of its feeding at night on squid bitter. Well, they can dolphins can go below the surface, but not nearly deep enough to find the daytime squid, it's not worth their energy to be way down there. The way that the beach whales or something are way down deep. So yes, there is a vertical migration of the ocean at night. And that is causing animals to feed at night, such as the resist dolphin. And you can see these you can see them during the daytime on Monterey Bay whale watching trips. I

Michelle Fullner  47:29  
didn't know about those guys. I've got one more listener question. Rachel wants to know how we can best support nocturnal wildlife in addition to planning native plants. And I would say also, of course, we talked about light reduction. So is there anything else besides planting native and reducing our light pollution? Sure,

Charles Hood  47:45  
I think that all of us could put a camera trap camera traps are pretty good. These trail cameras are called a camera trap implies there's some type of lethality involved, which is put up trail cameras that come down to price. Some are 30 bucks, some are 180 bucks that are pretty good quality. But if you document what's passing through even a city park of the trail cameras have a little boat you can you chain it to a tree so it can be stolen or you can pick it up every morning. If you document what's in your backyard, what's in the city park and just do a little newspaper article for your local you know, for the local community. If you're on a can email for all the people who bring cameras in your in your little neighborhood or village to share the fact that there are Bobcats where there are cavies, or even skunks and raccoons. Most people are excited by that a few people are frightened early, you know, it's going to harm me, I wish it would go away kind of thing. But really most people are really fascinated to know, oh my gosh, there are Bobcats right in our neighborhood. That is so cool. And that's just a trail camera will document that. So tuner bucks gets you a premium model. And they take a memory card just like a regular phone or regular camera. And some of the fancy ones, they can send the image to your cell phone. Oh, nice. So you'll get a little hit Oh, my outline just crossed by by background. But the old fashioned guy and you go and pull the memory card out, you know and and they run on batteries that lasts months, you know, they run on this case, I probably use the non renewable non rechargeable switch a regular lithium battery, a battery from the store and they last longer. So they're simple and easy. And there's they run off a little sensor. And you can set them up to have an infrared flash. So there's no light going off.

Michelle Fullner  49:14  
Nice. So low maintenance.

Charles Hood  49:17  
Fun. Yeah. And if you're worried about it being stolen, put it out at night and take it back, pick it up the next morning or just there's ways to to lock them to the tree or one of the things that Jose and I do with with our trail cameras. So they have a little label that says this is not for hunting, because they're typically used in the deep south to know where the deer are. So you can shoot the deer. So people are sometimes antithetical, but it's just as this is for wildlife study, not for hunting with a label on it, call this number, you know, here's the information about the study or something we could you could run a QR code back to your little website or something just to let people know. But in general, knowing you know, the odds of that having having it stolen are pretty small. somewhere

Michelle Fullner  49:51  
a little discreet. Yeah. All right. So we've touched a little bit on nationality yet. And I wanted to just touch on that a little bit. So congratulate because that releases on 1031. So

Charles Hood  50:01  
it's Halloween publicly released. Thank you my 19th book. So we're, yeah, we're on our way on that one. Oh,

Michelle Fullner  50:09  
that's great. And I was wondering if you could just tell me a little bit about the breadth of kind of what the book covers and, and how readers kind of might have their perspective broadened by reading the book. I

Charles Hood  50:21  
hope that the book can do a couple of things for people and one is to give people permission just to go out. Even private, a quarter mile, we're actually not that far from the cars. Yeah, right. We're having a great time, no one's bothered us.

Michelle Fullner  50:30  
I haven't seen a soul I mean, a human soul. Yeah, we

Charles Hood  50:33  
might pick up some records or something on the way back, we're not quite done, maybe see another hour or something. But to give people permission, nature belongs to all of us, it's not that you have to go to Yosemite or stay in the Awani Lodge, or you need this fancy thermal imaging scope that I have, or these fancy binoculars, just let it be. And if actually, if you do nocturnal nature, it fits into our schedule a little bit easier, because it is something you could do after work on a summer's evening, you can come to this preserve, for example, it's allowed, and just don't block the gate or get locked in. But I really want to encourage people to go out and feel like nature belongs to you. And then number one, and number two, nature is so interesting and diverse. If we ignore the nocturnal half, we're ignoring too much of the rest of nature. So we don't want to just let it be, Oh, I saw hummingbird. That's lovely. You know, I saw a flower, that's lovely. But how about the other kinds of things that are out, scorpions are fun to see, they're not going to bite you just even if you pick it up, it's probably not going to sting you. If you do get stung, it's probably going to be no worse than a bee sting. But just don't pick it up. You won't get stung, they can fly through the area, like hijack your car and like try to get in the passenger seat and wait and stimulated. I've seen

Michelle Fullner  51:39  
a lot of scorpions in my life. And usually they just sit there and you just look at them. And then you leave them alone and everything's fine. And

Charles Hood  51:46  
take a picture with yourself. If you're using the blacklight take a good picture with your cell phone again, your friends will be put on Facebook, your friends will be impressed. Oh, that's so cool, that kind of thing. And it's great way to get children excited about nature, find him but find a scorpion with a little $10 UV light, that's great. And they're gonna be they're gonna they're gonna love it. So the book is trying to do some science and talk about things like the way plants are using water at night and they're changing their physical profile. If we do laser beam studies of plants, they actually change their shape because they're bending tissues and moving water around. So I have a little bit of sciency stuff. I want to do a little bit of astronomy stuff I want to do. But really, it's just an invitation. Let's go out and have fun. And if it's not fun, don't do it. There's a picture of me in the book where we had caught the snakes in Texas in this river and I just I forgotten my waders. I just was in the river when they were hiking close. Yeah. Like so what I'm getting wet. Who cares? Like I'm an adult. No one's gonna get me in trouble. Sorry, mom. You know you're in heaven right now. So you can't get me in trouble for soaking wet. And we were just having such a great time other than we were starving them. Some of them's a barbecue in the park. Like we could smell them the barbecue. But it's just like some friends at that point. The picture just shows it's just it's fun to have fun. And I don't know how to say that. Like it's easy to be depressed and I got my taxes and you know this thing of Washington. They're such clowns, like, Forget all that. Like just go out and look at stuff. Yeah, now that time in Texas, we saw a water snake eating and endangered leopard frog. It was actually swallowing the frog. The frog is alive. It was actually the snake caught the frog from behind. So the head was gonna be the last thing that like do we let the endangered frog wiggle it free? Like can we intervene? Like what are the ethical thing right? And why are we rooting? I like snakes. Why am I really good the frog? Oh, listen, Alex next to the frogs. But I felt Oh, this poor frog just got caught by the snake and it's gonna suffer for five or 10 minutes until it's devoured but it's just the circle of life. But I have to say like, it was interesting watching it and it's interesting confronting my own biases. Why do I think that the rare leopard frog is more important than this reasonably uncommon? watersnake it's not like there are 1000s of those all over the place, you know, so I got to confront my own prejudices even as I have this sort of exciting strange, what do I do about it kind of moment, you know, I knew about the snake because a raccoon had made a rustle. I went over to see the raccoon that I found the snake. Then the snake caught a frog right in front of me like, this is all Hey, everybody, I'm an amateur. No one gave me a certificate. I just went out and decided to go do it.

Michelle Fullner  54:04  
Yeah. And I think too, and I think you bring up a really interesting point. Because when we're in those situations, there's a different kind of self knowledge that can come from that, then maybe we're confronted with in our everyday lives.

Charles Hood  54:17  
Sure. And I have to confront my fear if I'm afraid of the dark. What what, who taught me to be afraid of the dark? Why is that because as a, you know, a reasonably good primate I can see in the dark if I just let myself know that. And also I have to think about what am I not doing in terms of my schedule? Obviously, I should have been grading papers or doing something a productive thing and like watching something on TV or something like society wanted me to do, so I have to confront all of that. And then when you're using a flashlight at night, it focuses your attention. So we talked about mindfulness a lot. You want to be mindful, go for a walk at night with a flashlight, you can only think about what you see right in front of your life. You know, and I want your listeners to be cautious. Don't step on a rattlesnake. If you're in the desert, do be mindful about where your hands and feet are. So you do need a light and have a backup light. We said that earlier. But at the same time it's really fun. A way to get the world to be less distracting and less overwhelming. If you're on the spectrum, it's a great way to have a narrower set of options for what you're trying to process emotionally, spiritually, mentally, you

Michelle Fullner  55:10  
can experience a certain kind of quiet at night that just doesn't exist during the day. Sure,

Charles Hood  55:14  
you're limited by the varied amount of small light. But I can see you just well enough that I think it's less distracting, we can just focus on our conversation.

Michelle Fullner  55:20  
Right. All right, I have two more questions for you. One is any myths that you would like to dispel? Yes,

Charles Hood  55:25  
I want to say how safe it is. And I'll say this collectively. So we didn't say this in the podcast. I'll say it right now. I have seen 1000 mammals in the world. And I'm in the top 10. Guys. So I know the other nine guys who have seen more. Right? So collectively, I'll say literally, we've spent 1000s of nights in nature. And none of us has been bitten by a snake. Now, I'll admit, some of my friends have come close. Yeah. And I do know people that have been bitten by rattlesnakes when was working in our garden, you know, like, right, but it is so safe to tell you like and I have been. I've seen tigers and I've seen leopards. And I've seen lions and like, it is true. Like I've seen polar bears. And I was like, it is not a bad nasty world. It's actually a very interesting, relatively benign world. Mosquitoes can give you malaria. So trying to get bitten by a mosquito. But in terms of our fear, something's gonna get me if I go out at night. That's just balderdash. You know, we really need to find a way to not get around that. Go do it. Go do it. And that's the that's the whole podcast. That's the lesson of your podcast. I love all of you. Don't be afraid. Just go do it. You don't need a lesson. You don't need a certificate, just go do it.

Michelle Fullner  56:33  
Just go do it. And by doing it, you become less afraid. Right?

Charles Hood  56:37  
And you have fun. And if you don't like it after five times, then don't do it. That's fine. Go to do Nate denature still find to the butterflies are fine. Right?

Michelle Fullner  56:45  
Also good. Also good. Okay, last question for you. What about coming out here, and might still take your breath away.

Charles Hood  56:52  
I'm reminded every time I come to how much I get to learn that I have the privilege of getting to learn yet. So I have identified the calling and sexist cicadas, I could be completely wrong. You know, I'm just guessing that's what we call them. And I know it's a pretty large complex group, I probably you know, approximately correct, but I hear it and I like it. And I even think like if I was gonna do a symphony, and I wanted to include that in it and not just have like two sand blocks going against each other. If I was gonna have piccolos and the violins How would you even capture that in a symphonic moment. There's such a rich texture of sound. And I don't know how to translate it artistically. And I don't know even know what's creating it. I don't know what the lifecycle of these insects is. So I get to confront my own ignorance, which is really an invitation to go be smart. And that's all fun and sexy and exciting. learning things is the sexiest thing we can do. Absolutely. And it is calm and peaceful out here. Really, and I haven't had dinner, but who cares? We're having you were kind enough to spend your evening with me. So this is lovely. Likewise.

Michelle Fullner  57:49  
Well, thanks for coming out, Charles.

Charles Hood  57:50  
Thank you very much. Yes, appreciate it. Thank you.

Michelle Fullner  57:53  
I'm gonna try not to blind you while I turn this thing off. So get a buddy and a couple of flashlights fill up a travel mug with something hot pick an evening and go outside. Look for great horned owls at your city park. Or maybe you'll run into a possum or a skunk or raccoon. If you're lucky. Maybe it'll be a fox or Weber will look for rizos dolphins in Monterey Bay or do some nocturnal botanizing. Look for Hawk moths on sacred deterra or find a night blooming cactus to admire whatever you do. Open up your senses just a little wider than usual. Be just a little more still and let the sounds of the night wash over you. I want to thank Charles had so sincerely for giving me a whole evening to wander around a nature preserve and tell me cool things about the night. All well, he hadn't had dinner yet. And I want to thank the consumers River Preserve for allowing us to watch birds during the day and stay to watch bats into the night for this interview. Two more things about customers real quick one is that if you do go, please leave your pets at home. And two, they offer a California naturalist course of the preserve. So check out their website which is consuming us.org. That's COSUMNE s.org to see the beautiful wildlife photos and learn about the California naturalist course there. And if you listen to the very end of the episode, you know that I always share some small drama or something mundane or embarrassing for my week. And this week, it's that I spent an entire afternoon around a lot of people with maple syrup all over my pants because it dropped out of my daughter's lunchbox onto me because I sent her pancakes to school for lunch. Oh, and there was an owl hooting outside on my neighbor's roof the other night. So I did what anyone would do in that situation, which is that I climbed up on my fence and who'd back at it, which sounded exactly like a human hooting an owl and might have been alarming to my neighbors had they been awake. Okay, that's all it's one in the morning and I didn't actually mean to be quite as nocturnal for this episode. So good night. I can't wait to see you on the next episode of Golden State naturalist. Bye!