Rockin' Brocken

 

Brocken Spectre, Mt. Tamalpais

Coming back from Mt. Tam yesterday I heard the radio report that the Supreme Court reaffirmed that money is speech. Does that mean embezzlement is plagiarism?

I lucked out with my arrival on the mountain, where a surprise display of brocken spectre was peaking at about the same altitude as a favorite pull-out. Seems like it's been a few years since I was treated to such a fine display. The last time glories and spectres landed on my blog was July 3, 2021.

My next surprise was unique in my experience -- a tourist couple off-road in their pick-up truck above the Rock Spring parking lot, surrounded by dry grass, with their motor running while they took pictures. I know they were tourists because they finally drove down the hill and asked me how to get to East Peak. I told the driver he was lucky he didn't start a fire with his hot tailpipe. He was also lucky no rangers passed by while he was up there.

Spectral Portal

After photographing the brocken spectre in front of me, I turned around and noticed this Douglas fir sporting a blaze of god beams behind me.

Finely Weathered Signs

I've been wanting to return to this little meadow across from the Mountain Theater entrance to photograph the insect life among the oxeye daisies. The cucumber beetle was my first find. Note the bite marks on several of the petals. It's hard to make out, but the beetle is munching another such bite mark in this shot.

Spotted Cucumber Beetle (Diabrotica undecimpunctata)

Earlier in the morning I'd been walking through tall grass, thinking tick season was behind us. I always seem to get ticks in the spring. This one appeared to be snoozing on the back of the flower petal, not yet sticking its legs in the air to snag a passer-by.

Tumbling Flower Beetle

False Blister Beetle (Nacerdes centralis)

Red-shouldered Stink Bug (Thyanta pallidovirens)

Ruby-winged Plant Bug

Riders on the Ridge

Driving Down the Hill

The chipmunk was pretty far away, but I liked that it was munching on the seeds of dogtail grass. The slight haziness is probably due to out-of-focus grass in the foreground that I didn't notice when I was shooting the picture.

I was surprised the chipmunk eventually let me get so close.

At one point it ducked into that hole in the background, which is at the base of a bay laurel tree, but it soon came back out.

I was glad to be able to photograph a hummingbird working a native pink honeysuckle (Lonicera hispidula) that was using an oak to weave itself toward the sun.

The hummer kept hitting other blossoms that were on the other side of the tree, or in very deep clutter and/or shade. This bunch was the only one that was placed well, and I waited a good while before it finally got visited.

Queen of the Honeysuckle Patch

Acorn Woodpecker

Hopping To It

Peek-a-Boo

While I was watching for acorn woodpeckers, this little guy flew into view. I was pretty sure I'd never photographed this species before, and I didn't know what it was.

The bird caught a small spider but appeared to drop it instead of eating it.

It worked the tanoak for a few seconds, giving me good views of its bottom, and I wasn't sure the Merlin app would be able to identify the bird without a better view of its head and wings.

Amazingly, the app apparently saw enough: Western Warbling Vireo. 

There wasn't a whole lot of action at the trail camera. The raccoon showed up twice with a floating "raccoon hamburger" that I later surmised to have been honeycomb. The camera trap is set over a small pool, but with plenty of water still in the creeks, the pool isn't anything special yet. I've set cams on that tree in the background before. I noted a change on the log where it looked like a pileated woodpecker had made a big hole in it -- big enough that the hole now hosts a nest of honeybees.

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Botanicals

 

Allen's Hummingbird in the Children's Garden

I've been hoping to get out to do some photography for a while and finally had a chance this morning to drop in at the San Francisco Botanical Garden. When I locked my bike, mine was the only one there. After about three hours of wandering the grounds I started to get a little paranoid about theft, but I need not have worried. When I left, the bike rack was full. Do bikes even get ripped off anymore? The park used to be a hunting ground for car break-in thieves (who made light of smashing someone's window by calling it "bipping"), but I haven't seen any break-ins in quite a while. Are the crooks in jail? Did they get a job? Are they deterred by the new security cameras? Or did they finally just get tired of risking jail to steal tourists' underwear?

Anyway, the good news is the incredible weather we've had this weekend. When the skies are blue, all the days of fog are forgotten.

Planter Bloom at SFBG Entrance

One of the big manzanitas in the California Garden is still full of nectar-bearing flowers.

There was also a lot of milkweed in the California Garden, though the monarch is  resting on a coyote bush here.

I've still never seen any monarch caterpillars munching on the milkweed leaves there, but hope springs eternal. Here it's sipping nectar from a manzanita flower.

I was surprised to see such an intact pipevine swallowtail. Many of the butterflies I saw today had beat-up wings. The monarch above has a long slit in its right wing.

A California towhee left its usual haunts on the ground to fly into a tree to drink some monkey-hand nectar.

A pygmy nuthatch also took a break from probing pine cones to get in on the refreshments.

When I first arrived at the tree, a squirrel was chasing a bird out of it.

A Steller's jay appeared to be taking a sun bath in the wood chips. Later on I'd see a panting robin doing likewise.

West Coast Lady on Wild Radish

The black phoebe was quite far away when I noticed it had something unusual in its beak. It looked like a piece of cardboard. It went down the hatch before I could get closer, but if you look closely you can tell what it is.

Yep, it was one of these, a buckeye butterfly. I wondered why the phoebe wasn't eating more of them since there were so many around. Although buckeye caterpillars are toxic to birds, the adults aren't.

I'm not sure, but this might be another west coast lady.

A red admiral was one of several butterfly species attracted to the lilac flowers in the Children's Garden.

Painted lady or American lady? In any event, all three of our ladies are Vanessa species.

Even pipevine swallowtails drank the lilac juice.

From this angle it sort of looks like a mosquito.

A large tiger swallowtail stole the show. It was challenging to get a good angle on it before it flew away.

The Allen's hummingbird would rest in the nearby lilac bush and chase away any interlopers who showed up at this plant, including larger Anna's hummers.

Yet it was frightened off its own flowers by a tiny honeybee. (Incidentally, my wife and I were hiking past Laguna Honda Reservoir yesterday when we heard a shouted expletive from a guy who was poking around down near the bee hives....)

Twice I saw an interesting, mostly yellow, bird flying in the gardens (probably flying away from me). It was much bigger than a Wilson's warbler, though, and my first impression was hooded oriole. My glimpses were too fleeting to be sure, though, and I was unable to find it to make a photograph.

The Wilson's warbler worked his way through the big alder tree at the frog pond, showing itself in the open only briefly.

I'd been hearing the Nuttall's woodpeckers all morning and was glad to finally get a chance to photograph them.

The robin almost looks like it's in distress, but I believe it was just having a nice warm sun bath. It did get up and run off when I passed by (which I had to do to get where I was going).

Sort of looks like a junior Nuttall's, but it was definitely foraging on its own (unlike the junior from my last post).

After carrying the Z8 around for three hours I was ready to put it back in the camera bag, but then this Anna's hummingbird dropped by right next to me.

Aloe Love

Sandy and Luna have been flapping a lot lately, getting ready to fledge. Unfortunately, Sandy accidentally fledged earlier today.

One of the adults just brought a fish home to the nest. Luna sounds very excited by the visit.

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