Dec 15, 2017
Tomales Point lies on the northern tip of the Point Reyes Peninsula in Marin County, California. An ever-narrowing strip of coastal praire bordered on the east by Tomales Bay and on the west by the Pacific, the point is home to a rich assortment of animals great and small. While hiking through a patch of bush lupine near the peninsula’s tip, I spotted a number of bleached white shells littering the sandy soil, all belonging to the native Point Reyes Shoulderband snail (Helminthoglypta stiversiana). Within five minutes I had gathered so many that they began to overflow my hand. The brown stripe coiling its way around the circumference of each shell gives the Shoulderband its name.
August 2017
