NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – We actually have three different species of white egrets in the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument region: the great egret, the snowy egret and the cattle egret.

Although at a quick glance they may all look pretty much the same, they’re actually quite different from one another and a closer inspection will help you determine which is which.

The great egret (Ardea alba) is the largest of the three maxing out at about 3.5 pounds with an almost 6-foot wingspan. It has a yellow beak and black legs.

In the breeding season a patch on its face turns bright neon green and it gets long trailing feathers on its tail that it can lift straight up and fan out (like the tail of a peacock). It was these beautiful feathers that nearly brought this species to the brink of extinction in the United States in the late 1800s.

Thousands of the birds were destroyed so their feathers could be used in women’s hats. The National Audubon Society was actually founded in part to protect this species, and the Great Egret is still used as a symbol for that organization.

Male egrets choose “display areas” in colony-like nesting sites and begin the construction of the nests themselves before pairing up with a female to finish the nest and breed.

Great egrets eat a variety of fish, insects, reptiles and amphibians, crayfish, and even small birds and mammals. I once watched a great egret catch a large water vole in a rice field, then walk the rat over to a nearby pond to drown it before swallowing it whole.

The snowy egret (Egretta thula) is actually much smaller and more “svelte” that the great egret, weighing in at about 1 pound. Like great egrets, however, snowy egrets also nest in large colonies in tree-tops. Both males and females help to incubate the eggs, and sometimes pass sticks on to one another as they shift positions on the nest. These egrets are also known to cross breed with herons and other egrets producing hybrid species.

Like the great egrets, snowy egrets have bright white plumage, but their beaks are black and their feet are bright yellow. The snowy egret’s yellow feet (which turn brighter in the breeding season) are used in part to feel for prey hiding in the plants and silt in the water.

During the breeding season the snowy’s face will blush pink, and it gets long curling tail feathers. In 1886 these curling plumes were valued at two times the price of gold, and like the great egret this species was almost wiped out before conservationists rushed in to protect it.

The snowy’s diet is similar to that of the great egret, and they use both a stab-and-grab technique for fishing, along with the less dignified let’s-scramble-after-everything technique during which they chase after prey with their wings outspread.

The cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) looks something like a great egret with a yellow beak and gray-black legs, but it’s much smaller and stockier.

Unlike the great and snowy egrets, the cattle egret doesn’t really require an aquatic environment. It prefers foraging in open fields and can often be found following after herds of cattle, eating whatever insects and other small creatures run or fly around in the cattle’s wake.

These egrets will also “chase fires,” flying toward plumes of smoke to capture the insects that are trying to escape the flames.

In the breeding season, cattle egrets get a buff-colored wash on their head and chest feathers which can sometimes make them look “dirty.”

Like the other egrets, they form large breeding colonies, but they’re also more social on a daily basis than the other egrets and will often feed in large groups with other cattle egrets.

So, there you have it, a short primer on the three kinds of white egrets in the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument region.

As you go camping and hiking, keep an eye out for them, and see if you can properly identify them.

Mary K. Hanson is a Certified California Naturalist, a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and author of the “Cool Stuff Along the American River” series of nature guides available online through www.Lulu.com . Tuleyome is a501(c)(3) nonprofit conservation organization based in Woodland, Calif. For more information, visit www.tuleyome.org .

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The National Weather Service's latest New Year's forecast holds the potential for both rain and snow for the first days of the new year.

Forecasters are expecting a 20-percent chance of rain in Lake County on Saturday, declining to 10 percent during the day on Sunday.

Cold air that's on the way to Northern California early in the first week of the new year may bring rain and snow showers beginning on Sunday night, based on the specific Lake County forecast.

Snow levels may drop to as low as 500 feet, and several inches of snow is expected in some northern parts of Lake County, the forecast said.

The National Weather Service also is forecasting rain and snow showers continuing into Monday morning, with rain also likely on Monday night.

The possibility of snow also is forecast for Tuesday morning before the weather clears and remains mostly clear and sunny for the rest of the week, based on the forecast.

From Saturday through Friday, temperatures are expected to range from daytime highs in the upper 50s to nighttime lows into the low 30s, the National Weather Service said.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – Awareness of Lake County as a source of high-quality wine is clearly on the rise, according to the Lake County Winery Association and Lake County Winegrape Commission, which noted a significant number of 90-plus ratings for Lake County wines released in 2016.

“This year may be the ‘tipping point,’” said Terry Dereniuk, executive director of the Lake County Winery Association. “We’ve never seen this level of attention, from critics as well as consumers. Today, Lake County wines stand on their own, appearing regularly on retailers’ shelves and restaurant wine lists as both sellers and buyers recognize the quality of these outstanding wines.”

“Winemakers in Napa and Sonoma have been buying fruit from Lake County for many years and blending it into their wines.” said Debra Sommerfield, president of the Lake County Winegrape Commission, which helps growers in the county promote their products to winegrape buyers and others in the wine industry. “Increasingly, wines made from ultra-premium Lake County grapes are bottled and labeled as such, drawing praise from critics like Robert Parker and favorable comparison to other great wine-growing regions.”

The region also is attracting investment, as growers like Andy Beckstoffer and Clay Shannon and winemakers like Jed Steele look to the future.

Beckstoffer, for example, called his vineyard in the Red Hills AVA of Lake County “the most promising site in the New World of wine.”

And he has backed that statement with an innovative project designed to showcase the vineyard’s potential.

Working with a limited number of carefully selected winemakers, Beckstoffer is providing fruit and individually managing vines according to each winemaker’s preferences.

In exchange, the winemakers have made a three-year commitment to creating the best possible single-vineyard wines from that fruit.

“This project not only demonstrates Andy’s commitment to the region but also represents the kind of innovation that is bringing worldwide attention to Lake County,” Sommerfield said.

According to Steele, who has been crafting high-quality and immensely popular wines in Lake County for more than 30 years going back to his time with Kendall-Jackson, improvements in viticulture and winemaking in the region have resulted in the rise to prominence.

“We now have highly professional viticulturists planting large acreages in prime sites with varietals that excel in our soil and climate,” Steele said, who makes wine under four labels. “I am reminded of working in Napa Valley in 1968 to 1969, when the excitement was just stirring there. And I sense that same excitement and anticipation here in Lake County.”

Signs of both improving quality and increasing awareness of Lake County wines are the high scores awarded by prestigious critics such as Jim Gordon at Wine Enthusiast.

Gordon, a 30-year veteran of the wine industry, reviews wines from Lake County for the Wine Enthusiast Tasting Panel.

He explained the ratings this way: “In Wine Enthusiast reviews, 90-93 scores mean excellent quality and highly recommended. Ninety-four to 97 points mean superb wines that are great achievements in winemaking, and 98 to 100 means the pinnacle of quality. But to me, any wine deserving of a 90 or higher score passes a certain invisible threshold of excitement. It's a wine I enthusiastically want to share, by telling my readers and my friends about it.”

In 2016, Wine Enthusiast awarded 90 points or better to more than 30 wines. Here is a sampling:

• 2000 Chacewater Tawny Port (Lake County): 94 points.
• 2011 High Valley Petite Sirah (High Valley, Lake County): 93 points, “Editors’ Choice.”
• 2013 Obsidian Ridge Estate Grown Syrah (Red Hills, Lake County): 93 points, “Cellar Selection.”
• 2012 Steele Stymie Syrah (Lake County): 93 points, “Cellar Selection.”
• 2012 Peter Franus Red (Red Hills, Lake County): 94 points, “Editors’ Choice.”

The full list (with links to the reviews) can be seen on the Lake County Winery Association Web site.

Parker, who is widely acknowledged to be one of the most influential wine critics in the world, also is paying attention to Lake County and recently reviewed several wines from Obsidian Ridge:

• 2013 Obsidian Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon (Red Hills, Lake County): 93 points.
• 2014 Obsidian Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon (Red Hills, Lake County): 92 points.
• 2014 Obsidian Ridge Syrah (Red Hills, Lake County): 92 points.

In his review of the 2013 Obsidian Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon Red Hills, Parker noted “impressive intensity, a dense ruby/purple color, loads of licorice, graphite, mineral and black fruits, a medium to full body and moderate tannin.”

He called the 2014 Obsidian Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon from Red Hills, “a winner, slightly more open and precocious, but with plenty of blackcurrant and blackberry fruit, striking minerality (no doubt from the Obsidian rocks) and a full-bodied, luscious, juicy style with a voluptuous texture.”

According to Clay Shannon, president and CEO of Shannon Ridge Family of Wines, high ratings from well-regarded critics are an affirmation of many years of work and consistent focus on quality.

“We are starting to enter a time where our mountain-grown vines are reaching maturity and the quality and character of the wine is emerging,” Shannon said. “90 point wines are easier to sell and they quickly gain national attention in the retail wine market.”

Shannon Ridge Family of Wines is the largest producer in Lake County and bottles wine under five labels.

For more information about the  Lake County Winery Association call 707-357-5237 or visit www.lakecountywineries.org . To learn more about the Lake County Winegrape Commission call 707-279-2633 or visit www.lakecountywinegrape.org .

Any of the 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring every day who are contemplating a second job in their retirement may want to reconsider, due to an unfamiliar network of federal and state taxes that can serve as significant work disincentives, advises a University of California, Berkeley, economist and professor of law and a team of fellow researchers.

In “Is Uncle Sam Inducing the Elderly to Retire?” a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a team that includes Alan Auerbach, a UC Berkeley professor and director of the Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at UC Berkeley, suggests that prospective retirees can forget the Social Security Administration-provided benefit calculations that come in the mail.

“They’re completely meaningless,” said Auerbach.

He said they simply don’t factor in the implicit and explicit taxes that those ages 50 through 79 face from the offsets between income, age and benefits.

Auerbach said the research highlights a need for much more transparency in the nation’s retirement and fiscal systems.

The Social Security Administration could provide the information, he said, but likely needs a push to do so by “someone in government who thinks it’s important.” That someone, Auerbach suggested, could be in the presidential administration or in Congress.

Auerbach and his fellow researchers – Laurence Kotlifkoff, of Boston University and the Fiscal Analysis Center; Darryl Koehler, of Economic Security Planning Inc. and the Fiscal Analysis Center; and Manni Yu, of Boston University – did the math using data collected from older respondents to the Federal Reserve’s 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances and special software they developed.

The Fiscal Analyzer incorporates all major federal and state fiscal programs – such as federal corporate income tax, personal federal and state income taxes, state sales taxes, estate taxes, Social Security benefits, food stamps, disability benefits, Medicare and Medicaid benefits and premiums and Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes – and calculates remaining lifetime marginal net tax rates.

First, the good news

“We find that working longer, say an extra five years, can raise older workers’ sustainable living standards,” they report in their paper.

But the researchers report the impact is far smaller than suggested, in large part due to high net taxation of labor earnings. They also warn that many boomers now face or will face extremely high work disincentives arising from the hodgepodge and uncoordinated design of the nation’s fiscal system.

“Our findings show that older workers typically face high, very high or remarkably high marginal net taxation on their extra earnings,” they write, adding that work disincentives are highest for those at the bottom and top levels of resource distribution.

Don’t let the door hit you …

“Our findings suggest that Uncle Sam is, indeed, inducing the elderly to retire,” they conclude.

“Of particular concern is Medicaid and Social Security’s complex earnings test and clawback of disability benefits,” the researchers summarized. A clawback is the recovery of funds disbursed by a company, pension or government.

“But an open question is the extent to which the elderly correctly perceive these disincentives,” the report says. “Indeed … it’s hard to believe that policymakers, themselves, are cognizant of the level and spread of the work disincentives they are imposing on the elderly.”

The researchers found that the marginal net tax rate linked to a significant increase in retirement earnings, such as $20,000 a year from a part-time job, can for many elderly be “dramatically higher than that associated with earning a relatively small, say $1,000 a year, extra amount of money.”

For the lowest 20 percent of the population aged 50 to 79 with the lowest incomes, earning an extra $1,000 raises a household’s expected value of lifetime spending by just around $700, which translates into a 30 percent marginal net tax rate. Even an extra $10,000 of lifetime earnings means another roughly $6,000 in lifetime spending, and a 40 percent remaining lifetime net tax rate on those additional earnings.

Other financial tradeoffs or exchanges cited by the research team include:

• Medicare income limits, Social Security earnings test limits for those retiring before the current full retirement age of 66 and Social Security income tax thresholds.

• Increased premiums for Medicare Part B for retirees earning more money.

• Rising out-of-pocket healthcare costs through higher premiums, higher Medicare Part B co-payments and outpatient care not covered by Part B, as well as projected increases in prescription drug expenses.

• Implicit taxes linked to government benefits such as food stamps.

From bad to worse?

All this is set against a backdrop of an already grim financial picture for many baby boomers’ golden years. Only 67 percent of them have any retirement account, and many of those have very low balances. Forty percent of boomers have no retirement savings at all.

While Social Security was designed as a basic floor for retirees’ living standards, it actually provides at last 90 percent of more than a third of elderly households’ income. Nearly two-thirds of older households rely on Social Security for at least half of their income.

Meanwhile, prospects of increased Social Security benefits to help boomers are dim. Social Security already is 32.2 percent underfunded, according to current actuarial projections.

Kathleen Maclay writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.

NASA's NEOWISE mission has recently discovered some celestial objects traveling through our neighborhood, including one on the blurry line between asteroid and comet.

Another – definitely a comet – might be seen with binoculars through next week.

An object called 2016 WF9 was detected by the NEOWISE project on Nov. 27, 2016. It's in an orbit that takes it on a scenic tour of our solar system. At its farthest distance from the sun, it approaches Jupiter's orbit.

Over the course of 4.9 Earth-years, it travels inward, passing under the main asteroid belt and the orbit of Mars until it swings just inside Earth's own orbit. After that, it heads back toward the outer solar system.

Objects in these types of orbits have multiple possible origins; it might once have been a comet, or it could have strayed from a population of dark objects in the main asteroid belt.

2016 WF9 will approach Earth's orbit on Feb. 25, 2017. At a distance of nearly 32 million miles from Earth, this pass will not bring it particularly close. The trajectory of 2016 WF9 is well understood, and the object is not a threat to Earth for the foreseeable future.

A different object, discovered by NEOWISE a month earlier, is more clearly a comet, releasing dust as it nears the sun.

This comet, C/2016 U1 NEOWISE, “has a good chance of becoming visible through a good pair of binoculars, although we can't be sure because a comet's brightness is notoriously unpredictable," said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

As seen from the northern hemisphere during the first week of 2017, comet C/2016 U1 NEOWISE will be in the southeastern sky shortly before dawn.

It is moving farther south each day and it will reach its closest point to the sun, inside the orbit of Mercury, on Jan. 14, before heading back out to the outer reaches of the solar system for an orbit lasting thousands of years. While it will be visible to skywatchers at Earth, it is not considered a threat to our planet either.

NEOWISE is the asteroid-and-comet-hunting portion of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.

After discovering more than 34,000 asteroids during its original mission, NEOWISE was brought out of hibernation in December of 2013 to find and learn more about asteroids and comets that could pose an impact hazard to Earth. If 2016 WF9 turns out to be a comet, it would be the 10th discovered since reactivation. If it turns out to be an asteroid, it would be the 100th discovered since reactivation.

What NEOWISE scientists do know is that 2016 WF9 is relatively large: roughly 0.3 to 0.6 mile (0.5 to 1 kilometer) across.

It is also rather dark, reflecting only a few percent of the light that falls on its surface. This body resembles a comet in its reflectivity and orbit, but appears to lack the characteristic dust and gas cloud that defines a comet.

"2016 WF9 could have cometary origins," said Deputy Principal Investigator James "Gerbs" Bauer at JPL. "This object illustrates that the boundary between asteroids and comets is a blurry one; perhaps over time this object has lost the majority of the volatiles that linger on or just under its surface."

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) absorb most of the light that falls on them and re-emit that energy at infrared wavelengths. This enables NEOWISE's infrared detectors to study both dark and light-colored NEOs with nearly equal clarity and sensitivity.

"These are quite dark objects," said NEOWISE team member Joseph Masiero, "Think of new asphalt on streets; these objects would look like charcoal, or in some cases are even darker than that."

NEOWISE data have been used to measure the size of each near-Earth object it observes. Thirty-one asteroids that NEOWISE has discovered pass within about 20 lunar distances from Earth's orbit, and 19 are more than 460 feet (140 meters) in size but reflect less than 10 percent of the sunlight that falls on them.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has completed its seventh year in space after being launched on Dec. 14, 2009.

Data from the NEOWISE mission are available on a Web site for the public and scientific community to use. A guide to the NEOWISE data release, data access instructions and supporting documentation are available at http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/neowise/ .

Access to the NEOWISE data products is available via the on-line and API services of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive.

A list of peer-reviewed papers using the NEOWISE data is available at http://neowise.ipac.caltech.edu/publications.html .