Cedar Waxwings

 

Cedar waxwings are more often heard than seen, at least when it comes to seeing them close enough to photograph. I often hear them in the tops of tall eucalyptus and pine trees, where they communicate with each other in almost constant high-pitched tweets. Whenever I hear them I look for a nearby berry bush. If there isn't one around, I know the birds are going to stay high in their resting tree.

This morning I heard the telltale tweeting as I walked through Forest Hill on my way to West Portal. They were coming down to snag red berries which gave me a chance to photograph them. Afterward I watched them doing the berry-passing game with each other, too high up to capture in a picture.

A recent evening sky view out the back window.

The low-hanging fruit was apparently too low for comfort, but the berries higher in the tree were getting sparse, making for gymnastics in trying to find them.

No Berries Here

Ally-oop!

Lots of spiky wild cucumber fruits these days.

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Hairy Heights

 

Hairy Woodpecker, Golden Gate Heights

I took a walk around the neighborhood with the Z8 in a backpack this morning, just to get used to carrying it around, not really expecting to need it. There was a strong, chilly sea-breeze under a fog-shrouded sky, and even the sparrows were mostly hunkered down. 

As I was coming down from Golden Gate Heights Park where I'd watched a bunch of crows and a few ravens soaring exuberantly in the wind and occasionally breaking off to chase one of the local red-tailed hawks, I thought to myself that it would be nice to see a woodpecker. A few seconds later I heard the tweet of the fellow in these shots and was fortunate to be able to fire off a few frames before he flew away.

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Pacheco Pond

 

Mute Swan at Pacheco Pond, Bel Marin Keys

We were meeting a friend for lunch up north today and stopped by Bel Marin Keys to check out Pacheco Pond. I didn't know what to expect, but I was glad I'd brought the Z8. The little island in front of the parking lot was festooned with nesting great egrets and some kind of weird swans that appeared to be paired up, or in the process of doing so. Turns out they were non-native mute swans (Cygnus olor), descendants of the ones first brought to this country from Europe in the 1800s.

This is the view back toward the island from the little trail on the eastern edge of the pond.

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Junco on a Branch

 

Dark-eyed Junco, Mallard Lake

I'd hoped to use the Z8 to grab a 1/4000th-second shot of the Allen's hummingbird bathing in the little creek at Mallard Lake today, but I finally gave up after waiting a little over an hour -- with another guy who was also waiting to get the same shot! I will definitely try again on a weekday when there aren't so many people tramping around. 

As I sat on my log to wait for the hummer, a junco dropped down into the creek and bathed out of my line of sight, then hopped up onto a nearby branch to preen. A red-shouldered hawk also dropped by to peruse the local menu but soon flew off to keer!-keer!-keer! somewhere else.

I was surprised to see a grasshopper on the sidewalk as I got off my bike at home. It blended in very well with its surroundings, but there sure wasn't much to eat. I can only wonder what the attraction was.

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And Another Nest

 

Nope, not a hummingbird nest!

I was sitting on the ground beneath a pine tree next to the Bison Paddock, hoping to catch a red-headed house finch hanging out on the chain-link fence, when I looked up and saw a baseball stuck in the upper branches. Only on closer examination did I see that the baseball was a wasp nest (a.k.a. aerial yellow jacket, Dolichovespula arenaria).

I love how the nest is wrapped around not only the tree's branches, but even its clusters of needles. The bees are still busy building, so I expect it to get a lot bigger. I only hope the park staff don't spot it. They destroyed the last one I'd hoped to watch as it evolved.

P.S. It looks like Artificial Intelligence is evolving too. Here's a scary bit of news.

This unusually colored iris (it looked almost brown in the early morning light) was growing in the newly refurbished Garden for the Environment. Their construction project took a surprisingly long time, so it's nice to be able to walk through the whole garden again.

Autumn Olive in Spring

This plant looked like a cross of stinging nettle, mint, and forget-me-not. It's called Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens), a member of the forget-me-not family.

A number of house finches were feeding on the mustard seeds next to the Bison Paddock fence. When I first showed up, many of the finches were hanging out on the fence, perhaps resting between forays into the mustard, but of course they all fled as soon as they realized I was interested in them.

One thing the Z8 does far better than the Lumix is catching birds in flight. The red-tailed hawk was screeching its classic call as it circled over the paddock to gain altitude.

A pair of Western bluebirds had to constantly defend their nest box against very active tree swallows.

A pair of Steller's jays swooped onto a pine branch above my head, occasionally dropped to the ground to snatch something I couldn't make out, then leaped back up into the tree.

Finally, one of the house finches obliged me by posting on the fence in the way they'd been doing when I first arrived.

The red paintbrush is still going strong at the Balboa Natural Area down near the beach. Notice how close it's growing to the coyote brush, whose roots it parasitizes. Paintbrush does have chlorophyll for photosynthesis, so it's considered a hemiparasite.

There's only one juvenile red-tail overlord at Balboa Natural Area these days. I think Marlon Bando and its (suspected) sibling flew away as they became more mature hawks.

There were at least two Allen's hummingbirds appearing to lay claim to a huge pride-of-madeira patch in Golden Gate Park at the intersection of MLK Jr. Drive and Bernice Rogers Way. They spent almost all their time chasing each other and maybe other interlopers, while countless bumblebees visited the flowers with impunity. The white-flowering bush (small-leaved myrtle, Gaudium laevigatum) was next door, as well as pretty much all over the place. 

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More Pipevine Swallowtails

 

Pipevine Swallowtail, SF Botanical Garden

A late-morning dentist appointment precluded a more ambitious photo outing, so I biked down the hill to the SFBG to spend more time trying to get comfortable with the new Z8 and 180-600mm lens, and to try again with the resident butterflies. 

The camera is great at finding birds' eyes, but there is no setting for insects (yet), so there's a bit of setting-switching to do when trying to photograph both birds and insects. I think I did a little better today at putting the focus point on the butterflies' eyes than last time. 

A lot more caterpillars are on the pipevine leaves now. The gardeners recently replanted the area, and although they kept some of the pipevine plants intact, they are trimmed way back. I hope there's still enough leaves to support all the larvae.

Some of the butterflies are still laying eggs on the sparse pipevine leaves.

California Towhee

At the time I shot this I didn't realize the red-shouldered hawk was getting photo-bombed by a passing jet.

Townsend's Warbler in Puya chilensis

Guardian of the Succulents

Allen's Hummingbird and Salvia spathacea

Hummingbird Sage

Pipevine Swallowtail Larvae

These purple flowers come with color saturation already turned up to eleven.

In addition to the pipevine planted on the north edge of the new nursery and reservoir, there's another patch on the north edge of the California Garden (and another in the Redwood Grove).

About to Take Wing

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