Wired

 

American Robin on a Wire

The robin and the hummingbird below it were wired by virtue of their chosen perches, but were absolutely serene in their demeanors. Neither showed any sign of nervousness at my approach, or even when I dug a camera out of my knapsack. There was none of the usual head movement back-and-forth, no side-eye to check the sky and/or the human below, and certainly no chirping of any kind. Both birds calmly gripped their respective wires and remained still, without so much as preening a feather.

Female Anna's Hummingbird

Calla Lily Leaves After Today's Light Rain

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Red-naped Sapsucker

 

Red-naped Sapsucker, Elk Glen Lake

Unless I'm mistaken about the ID, this is my first sighting of a red-naped sapsucker. It was in the same oak tree that hosted a similar-looking yellow-bellied sapsucker back in November. This guy was quite small and eager to elude my lens, so I only got a couple of decent shots, and at some point I completely lost him. As I circled the tree I never knew if he was well-hidden or if he'd already flown away. 

Another first, but just first-of-season, on Monday's hike was an Allen's hummingbird hovering over the little stream on the east end of Mallard Lake. I only got a couple shots off before the only other person anywhere near me burst on the scene and frightened off the hummer. I waited in vain for it to come back to give me another chance, but gave up to continue my walk after about ten minutes.

The next surprise was finding what I believe to be a couple of ripening papaya fruits. I used to climb our backyard papaya tree to pick the fruit when I was 4 or 5 years old, living on Oahu. Papaya trees were so much taller back then....

White-crowned Sparrow & California Lilac, Sunset Parkway
(The sparrow climbed the blooming Ceanothus bush from the ground up, but in this shot he is actually perched on a well-placed wooden stake.)

It seems like the red-shouldered hawks have been busy lately, frequently calling out to each other and gathering nest material. Back when The Birds of Golden Gate Park came out in 1930, these guys were called red-bellied hawks and were said to be very rare.

A well-camouflaged mallard hen at Mallard Lake.

By the time I remembered to increase the shutter speed from its 1/250th-sec. setting, someone came along and frightened the hummer away. I only include this shot to recall my first Allen's hummingbird of the season. I believe that's all watercress in the stream.

I'll be looking forward to seeing if they ripen all the way to yellow before being snatched by someone or some critter.

Red-shouldered Hawk in Cypress, Elk Glen Lake

He's definitely got red on his nape, but I didn't see any other pictures showing that red swash behind the eye.

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Outcrop Bluebird

 

Western Bluebird, Rocky Outcrop Park

Murphy's Law of Photography strikes again. When my wife and I took a walk around the neighborhood Sunday afternoon I decided to leave my camera at home. Naturally, we got a great view of a red-tailed hawk taking apart its prey on a picturesque tree stump at Grandview Park. It would have made a great urban wildlife shot, with the park and stump in the foreground and the Outer Sunset in the background.

As I was grieving over having missed this photo opportunity, the hawk took off with the prey animal and a foot-long tuft of grass dangling from its talons. As it rose in the sky it called out "Keeeeeer!" and soared over a nearby  grove of eucalyptus trees, a row of houses, and the Rocky Outcrop Park, then suddenly tucked into a dive and made a beeline back to the stump. 

That's when another hawk began to call out in response. The new red-tail soared into view and then it, too, tucked into a dive, then flared out its feathers to land on the stump right next to the first hawk, where it took possession of the prey and flew away with it, the extra tuft of grass still dangling like a kite-tail.

Thankfully, the rest of the walk was uneventful....

Later in the day I tried to get redemption by going back out to look for the hawks with my camera. I figured it was an incalculable longshot, but I took heart when I saw both of the hawks soaring above the houses at the top of the Rocky Outcrop. They circled a little bit, but soon glided out of sight to the south, taking my hopes with them.

While watching the hawks I'd also heard the light whistles of a Western bluebird  nearby, and I soon found a male and female hunting for insects on the ground from their perches high on a light post with a No Parking sign attached to it. Sometimes they'd both post up on top of the light pole with nothing but an overcast sky in the background, but more often one of them would post up on the sign. They made numerous forays from the pole, but I only witnessed one catch: the female caught a Jerusalem cricket which, after some difficulty, it finally managed to swallow whole.

I spent a fair amount of time with the bluebirds in the breezy and chilly chute between the Rocky Outcrop and the row of houses along 14th Avenue, while a very light fog-like spray also carried in the wind. Eventually I felt like it was time to leave the bluebirds alone, and accept that the hawks were not coming back anytime soon.

At first, only the less flashy female bluebird was in camera range, but then this male swooped right past my head to land next to a car in a driveway behind me. Whatever insect presumably drew it down must have escaped, and the bird quickly returned to the pole where it traded places with the female on top of the No Parking sign.

The female, meanwhile, had scored a juicy Jerusalem cricket.

From then on, the female pretty much stayed beyond camera range.

The male continued to hunt close to the road.

The Blue Hunter

Here the bluebird is just landing back on a metal stake that it also used as a hunting perch.

Feather Spread

The bluebirds made me happy.

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Mallard

 

Mallard at Lloyd Lake, Golden Gate Park

When I first saw the mallard above, it was doing the head-dip dance with a mallard drake with normal coloration. The normal drake followed this one around like a typical suitor, and I could only wonder whether the pale-colored mallard is female or if this is some kind of adolescent practice of the adult mating ritual. 

I wasn't sure at first that the pale duck was a mallard, so I imported it into my phone's Merlin app when I got home. Bird IDs usually pop right up, but this time the app spun for quite a while before it did finally settle on mallard.

Mallard Chums

I've started seeing more great blue herons around the park again as mating season approaches. This one was resting at South Lake, but there were also a couple in the nesting trees at Blue Heron Lake. Incidentally, I also saw a pale-colored mallard at Blue Heron Lake. Was it the same one from Lloyd Lake, or a second duck?

Ghost Moon
(Shot of moon rising over Twin Peaks on Friday. I assume the double image is from shooting through a double-paned window, but the exposure difference between the two moons is an interesting bit of physics.)

A rain shower passed over us this morning, and then the sun came out and delivered a rainbow.

Sierra High Country Screen Capture, 7:15 a.m. on Saturday

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Rainy Days

 

Placid Mallard Lake, Golden Gate Park

I love a rainy day, but I'm not too crazy about those "showery" periods where there isn't enough rain to show up on the weather radar, but there's plenty to make you wet if you decide to go for a walk. It seemed like a new radar-invisible shower would roll in every time I got ready to go out this morning, so I finally gave up on a long walk and instead put on my rain gear to go out and experience the wind and rain at nearby Grandview Park.

The past several days haven't been very photo- or blog-inspiring. The Mallard Lake scene above is from Tuesday. Yesterday I was surprised to see a couple of band-tailed pigeons with their telltale white-striped necks in a street tree in Forest Hill, but they were mostly obscured by branches. I'm used to seeing bandies on Mt. Tam and don't think I've ever seen them before in the city.

Though I wasn't able to photograph it, a scene from yesterday that stood out was watching a red-shouldered hawk fly over the JFK Promenade (north of the De Young Museum) with a large, forked, lichen-tassled branch in its beak. It lost its grip just before reaching a landing spot on a eucalyptus tree, and the branch fell like a spear. Fortunately, it landed in some plants instead of on top of someone's head.

One of the band-tailed pigeons appeared to be sitting on a nest, but it might just have been a bunch of sticks.

A couple of mourning doves were hunkered down at Grandview Park this morning. They often hang out on the staircase railings, or even on the stairs, but it might have been too windy for that today. My wind meter read 15-30 mph at the top of Grandview's south-facing stairs, with gusts between 30-35, and one gusty devil topping 40 mph.

Fluffed Feathers After The Rain

While I was trying to hold the camera steady enough to photograph the doves, this tiny powerhouse flew onto a nearby perch. Gusting winds drove it to several other perches before it zoomed away.

Footsteps of Spring

The sparrows were very jumpy and keeping to concealment until it started to rain.  Then they all came out. Unfortunately, I had to lower my shutter speed due to the darkened sky, and I soon decided to leave when the rain began to fall in earnest.

After the Rain

Wind Clips From Grandview Park

Screen grab of the Mt. Shasta sunrise from last Saturday.

Another grab from Tuesday.

This morning's view from the High Sierra cam.

* * *

Magical Thinking

 

Green Heron Shows Its Tongue

I held off on my walk today after looking at the Accuweather radar report, which forecast rain starting at my location in 29 minutes, which would have had me getting wet about one-third of the way into my jaunt. I figured I would just wait and stay dry. And besides, I had other things to do, so I did them. 

Naturally, it never rained another drop. Highly local weather forecasts often miss the mark despite all the available technology.

As I was watching the green heron at the Lily Pond this morning I overheard someone urging the gardener who was working there to join her in an experiment, and to spread the word to get more folks on board. The experimenters would pray for good outcomes at the lakes throughout the park, then later judge their success. 

I've actually heard of scientists looking for evidence of the efficacy of prayer, and they have yet to find it. As the gardener went back to placing mulch around the edge of the pond, I couldn't help thinking his work was a far more certain way to achieve a good outcome than any number of folks praying for it (even assuming they could all agree on what the good outcome would be).

Although the green heron was out in the open and close to shore, the person advocating prayer to benefit nature was unable to see it.

I wasn't going to post this shot of a mostly concealed hairy woodpecker until I noticed those big feet. Maybe it's just the angle, but they seem large in proportion to the size of the bird. Just for laughs I googled "do hairy woodpeckers have large feet," and the humorless AI response was, "No, hairy woodpeckers don't have large feet." 

Dense gray clouds scudded across the sky throughout my walk, but it never did rain again after the early morning soaking.

Got One

Bird tongues do have taste buds, but the green heron's is also suited to guiding prey into its mouth. Green herons (also known as water witches, possibly because they sometimes use tools to lure prey into range) are the second-smallest herons in the United States, just behind the least bittern.

And speaking of small birds, the resident male and female ruby-crowned kinglets were active again today, often using these elderberry branches to launch from.

Nearby blackberry vines are another favorite launching point.

Big Ole Heron Feet
(Once again I'm contradicted by Google AI, which accepts no poetic license and calls their feet "stout," but not "big.")

A mallard hen casually paddled into the duckweed, taking no notice of the heron.

And the heron seemed to reciprocate by ignoring the duck.

Green Heron In Motion

* * *

More Green Heron

 

Green Heron at Lily Pond, Golden Gate Park

The rain finally took a break around 12:30 this afternoon, so I broke the cabin fever by riding down to the San Francisco Botanical Gardens to see what I might find on a rainy day, then eventually moved on to check out the Lily Pond. 

The green heron was on the east side of the pond, right where it was first reported (it was over on the west side yesterday). At first it was in some reeds much like the ones it was hunting in yesterday, although the light was completely different today under cloudy skies. In fact, the cloudy skies soon became rainy skies, and I had to go find a little bit of cover to slip into my rain pants. 

When I returned, the heron flew over to some nearby branches, chasing off a black phoebe that had been using the perch to hawk from. Then the heron popped over to an even closer branch for a little while before swooping onto the edge of the pond and out of my line of sight. Eventually it flew back to the branches, but only as a brief stopover before flying out of sight again.

The pink magnolia tree still looks pretty fresh.

Townie Hopper

Hummer in the Pink

The scrub jay picked up some lichen a couple of times, but I didn't see if he just dropped it, or ate it, or what.

But it soon jumped down to the ground and foraged a snail out of some nearby plants, then took it over to this rock to peck off the shell.

It continued pecking off more shell from the cover of a manzanita branch before finally freeing the gastropod for consumption.

Peekaboo Kinglet

There was a lot of chainsaw noise up by the hummingbirds' aloe patch. A huge eucalyptus had fallen in the storm, blocking the main entrance to the Children's Garden.

I'd just put my camera back in my knapsack as a rain squall blew in, when this hummer swooped in among the currant flowers. I'd been hoping to get a shot of a hummer on these California native flowers and was lucky this one stuck around just long enough for me to get my camera back out and shoot one frame.

It looks like the gardeners transplanted some of the pipevine plants from their old patch near an area under construction for greenhouse expansion. The pipevine is mainly twining into the currants on the northern edge of the California garden.

Garden Litter

The two white-fronted geese I recently saw hanging out with the Canadians at Blue Heron Lake were grazing in the Great Meadow with a group of their larger cousins this afternoon.

Green Heron Sticking Its Neck Out

Getting a Foothold

Bent Toe

Wind-ruffled Feathers

I thought he was just turning around, but by the time my viewfinder blackout ended after this shot, he had flown to the edge of the pond and out of sight behind a bunch of foliage.

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