Rocky/Columbus Day

 

Rocky Raccoon, Golden Gate Park

As I was out and about on a foggy and chilly Columbus Day yesterday, I finally ran into a raccoon at North Lake (part of the Chain of Lakes). Years ago, there was a "feeding station" at the south end of the lake where numerous raccoons could often be found swarming around whoever was feeding them at the time. I think the word has gotten out that feeding wildlife is not a good idea, but I do kind of miss seeing these furry bandits.

Raccoon Contemplating Emergence
(but turning around and heading back into thick vegetation)

Golden-crowned Sparrow Sings His Heart Out

The great blue heron was zeroing in on something on the edge of the lake, so I waited and waited, figuring if the GBH can be patient, then so can I. After awhile he decided whatever had captured his interest had gotten away.

Greater Scaups

Double-crested Cormorant Drying Its Wings

When I stopped to check out the ducks and cormorants on this Columbus Day, I noticed my odometer....

Birds of a Feather, Ocean Beach

Shutter-Buggin'

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Spidey Sense

 

Four-spot Orb Weaver, San Francisco Botanical Garden

It was late in the morning, past the early bird-watching hours, so I left home for the Botanical Garden in a little bit of a rush. As I went to lock up my bike on the rack outside the garden I realized I'd forgotten the key to my bike lock. I might have made an audible groan of some sort.

But I rode back up the hill, got the key, and returned. After checking in at the ticket booth I headed south toward the little fountain area to see if any little twitters were splashing about in there, and instead there was a red-tailed hawk! If I hadn't forgotten my key, I'd have been way back in the garden and missed the hawk for sure. Chalk one up for the unconscious spidey sense.

The red-tail spent a lot of time just standing in the bath without actually bathing, as if he owned the place (and he did). A hummingbird stood by making alarm chirps, and all the other birds kept their distance. The hawk finally finished its bath and hopped up onto the edge of the fountain, shook its feathers, then took flight.

Hawk In A State of Fluff

The Scene As I Found It

Making a Splash

Time to Exit

Whoosh!

A garden snail was climbing branches three or four feet high in the tree.

Spider Trek #1

Spider Trek #2

Spider Trek #3

Spider Trek #4

Song Sparrow at Pond's Edge

Here's an adult male white-crowned sparrow belting out his tune.

A skipper tried to soak up what little sunshine was coming through.

The fox sparrows are back in town, kicking in the forest litter for seeds and insects.

Song Sparrow

Cactus Garden

Townsend's Warbler

A hermit thrush being hermit-like, about to dart deep into the darkness immediately after posing for a single frame.

A group of yellow-rumped warblers was flitting around in the grass with some robins, presumably going after different (and smaller) prey.

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A RAW Deal

 

Townsend's Warbler on Coyote Brush, Grandview Park

I've been meaning to check out the new Panasonic FZ-80D's RAW-format imaging quality for a while, and yesterday I finally did it. I took so long because I've continued to be mesmerized by the term "point-and-shoot" as being little more than a toy camera. I think I'm finally ready to shake off that little delusion.

I started out by shooting a couple of subjects in my back yard, including some turkey and hawk feathers, just to see if there was any noticeable difference between the RAW and JPEG files. I had very low expectations. I figured there might be a little tiny bit of difference, and only if you squinted real hard.

Well, instead, my expectations were completely blown out of the water! 

The RAW files give you so much more to work with (the resulting file size is around 21 megabytes, or twice as big as the highest resolution JPEGs), and they also look more voluptuous than JPEGS straight out of the camera. 

But what I was especially interested in was how ISO 3200 would look. With a monster ISO like that I could eliminate the camera-shake and subject-movement issues that wreck so many photos. But could a "point-and-shoot" possibly deliver decent images so far above its base ISO of 80?

After the back yard shots showed promise I wanted to try it out on live birds (not just feathers), so I trekked over to Grandview Park, where bunches of sparrows can usually be found. I got there, and there wasn't a bird in sight! No cheeping within earshot either. But just as I was about to go somewhere else, a pair of Townsend's warblers flew into the bushes right next to me. 

All the bird shots on this page were done at ISO 3200. Please click to view them larger. I can hardly believe this little camera can deliver so much. But I must confess the camera did have some help, namely Lightroom's noise-reduction feature. All the images on this page (and most likely from this day forward) were shot in RAW mode, then adjusted in Lightroom and transferred as TIFF files to be adjusted again and resized as a JPEG in Photoshop.

P.S. It finally dawned on me that I can copy bird photos to my phone camera, then use the Merlin app to identify them. So I've gone back to correct the yellow warblers vs. orange-crowned warblers in previous posts, and I look forward to using the app more in the future!

Rear Window View on Saturday

Townie Hunting in Coyote Brush

Townie on the Move

Coyote Brush Flower Fluff

Some juvenile white-crowned sparrows eventually showed themselves. I guess since it's not mating season, the black-and-white-capped males were hiding instead of belting out their tunes from the tops of bushes.

A couple of black-and-orange stink bugs were climbing around on a poison oak patch.

There's usually a fair amount of trash that entitled twits have tossed into the weeds. I thought it might be fun to stick a dollar bill deep down in the poison oak (but I restrained myself).

Stink Bug Side View
(The red color in the background is from ice plant.)

The grass you see here is called Ehrharta erecta, and I've learned that it's the bane of city park gardeners because it's so invasive and hard to get rid of. So I was glad to see this young white-crowned sparrow nibbling on it, showing that it does have some use to the local wildlife.

City View from Grandview Park

Zoomed View

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Bobcat Road

 

Bobcat Passing Through
(composite image)

Much of area around the big flat-topped rock in the lower middle of the frame used to be a watering hole. All that's left after last year's storms filled the hole with rocks is that little puddle in the lower right part of the frame.

The bobcat above stopped briefly to spray the corner of that big rock to its left, which you can see in the video below. In the next capture, a gray fox stops to investigate the bobcat's scent mark. The bobcat passes through a few more times, always heading downstream. The video ends with a crunch, courtesy of a Steller's jay.

Cropped Capture

A raccoon stops to investigate the tiny water hole.

Tam Cam

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Bird Sounds

 

Yellow-rumped Warbler, Golden Gate Park

In what is a first for me, I heard a hermit thrush singing this morning in Golden Gate Park -- specifically in the Oak Woodland near the horseshoe pits. The song seemed tentative, but there could be no mistaking it. However, I wasn't certain until I briefly saw the bird. There might be some territorial squabbling going on, too, as I watched one hermit chase another through the oaks. 

What I'd love to see in a nature show (where the level of photography seems to keep getting more incredible) would be a slow-motion, birds-eye view of one of those chases through the trees. Think how fast the bird's brain has to process visual information to keep from running into something. No human could think that fast. 

I was impressed again later this morning by sparrows gathered in bushes near the Bison Paddock. They usually flew from a bush to land within one of the openings on the chain-link fence, but occasionally they flew right through the hole without stopping.

Of course, many birds can do these awesome stunts, as I was reminded while watching some yellow-rumped warblers in the park. (Not that long ago, I was wondering when I was going to start to see the yellow-rumpers. Now they are among the most common birds I see.) I was surprised to see several of them hunting for insects on the ground; they reminded me of little robins. Other times they would dart from a tree branch to snatch something in mid-air, like a flycatcher.

Bearded Oak, Golden Gate Park

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Little Angels

 

Killdeer, Richardson Bay

As I pedaled through Sausalito I could hear terns screeching, and I even saw one make a dive for fish, so I hoped I'd see even more bird life when I got past town and out onto the Mill Valley Sausalito Pathway. Nope! I got all the way to the other side, near the float plane company, before I saw any birdlife at all: a snowy egret and two killdeer. I guess whatever the terns were going after was concentrated in a small area on the Sausalito waterfront.

I did see a group of black-necked stilts working a shallow pond in the marshy area along the north side of Coyote Creek. They were out of photography range, but I was glad to see them still in the area. What a shame that wildlife is so rare these days. If I could ever go back in time, it would be back to "indigenous time," before the arrival of Europeans, to see this part of the world when it was still teeming with wildlife.

I love the killdeers' orange eye-ring.

Hazy Atmosphere, View from Mt. Tamalpais

There was a large hawk on a bare tree where I've never seen a hawk before. My first impression from seeing its back was that it was a red-shouldered hawk, but it flew away before I could get my camera on it. These mourning doves were on a nearby branch and were probably glad to see it leave the area.

As were a group of California quail hiding in the shade of a nearby tree next to the little arroyo between the Cataract and Simmons trails.

Most of the leather root growing near the trail cams has been browsed to oblivion by deer, but a plant growing among a bunch of chain ferns appeared to be out of reach. These are its seed heads.

I guess half an acorn is better than none. The acorn woodpeckers were very busy today.

I'm surprised this little branch was viewed as a good place to stash an acorn.

This hummer showed up while I was watching the woodpeckers, and I couldn't resist snapping a shot of the handsome little angel.

This guy's got the goods.

Acorn Woodpecker Pantry in Douglas Fir Snag

I heard a familiar tweet and was excited to see a yellow-rumped warbler nearby.

The woodpeckers gathered acorns directly from the oak trees, despite numerous acorns already lying on the ground. The Steller's and scrub jays also stuck to plucking acorns directly from the tree.

Woodpecker Flyaway

While I was watching the woodpeckers from beneath the big oak next to the interpretive signs in the Rock Spring parking lot, this gopher was busy snagging morsels of food to drag back into its hole. Every now and then, it would dare to exit its hole almost entirely.

Luckily the coast was clear of hawks, coyotes, and bobcats.

Mountain Fur

Some of the haze in the air looked like smoke. Signs placed on the side of the road indicated there were prescribed burns going on.

A variegated meadowhawk soaks up the sun.

It was clinging to a grass stalk on a hillside, in a position that was impossible for me to get the whole dragonfly in focus, from head to tail.

Watching TV

The Hong Kong-flagged container ship Seaspan Rio de Janeiro, recently arrived from Fraser River, Canada, was heading to the Port of Oakland. It steamed directly toward Angel Island before turning to starboard and heading for port. The strange heading probably had something to do with...

...these guys, the Blue Angeles getting in a practice session.

The first time the jet blasted over our heads as we stood next to the breakwater adjacent to the Warming Hut, a nearby child broke out in tears. The three our four times after that, he didn't even flinch.

The Brown Angels

The YM Upsurgence, flagged in Taiwan, sails beneath the Golden Gate Bridge on its way to the Port of Oakland. A woman standing with her family next to me commented that it was probably full of the stuff they get at Costco....

Tower & Power

A flock of gulls descends on a sea lion that was thrashing its prey down to pieces small enough to swallow.

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