Mating Hummingbirds

 

Mating Anna's Hummingbirds, SF Botanical Garden

Just the other day as I was watching a hummingbird gather nest material from a cattail's fluffy flower head, I thought to myself that I would never in a million years get a shot of mating hummingbirds. And this morning, I almost didn't.

The Z8 is a great camera, but sometimes it just can't find the bird in the frame. When I first saw the hummers mating I put my lens on them and could not get the autofocus to lock in -- not even close. There goes my one-in-a-million shot right there, I thought. But then I saw them going at it again! This time the autofocus dialed them right in. Whew!

Later on, I was watching a flock of cedar waxwings when a school group of maybe a dozen 8-year-olds wielding sticks as swords filled the space around me, which included a piece of statuary holding a bowl of water. Even the girls were playing this imaginative stick game, making up a storyline as they went, and one of the girls said, "Put your stick in the water and it becomes 20 percent stronger!" Without missing a beat, a boy called out, "It's holy water!"

Straight outta King Arthur's Court.

As I figured, the pipevine swallowtail caterpillars are at the end of the line on most of the small, remnant pipevine plants just north of the pond and new greenhouses. They ought to move some of them to a couple other areas where there's fresh and more plentiful pipevine growing.

Song Sparrow on Turquoise Puya Bromeliad

Burly House Finch

House Finch Munching Leaves

Anna's Hummingbird Feeding on Tree Fuchsia (Fuchsia arborescens).

Allen's Hummingbird Feeding on Woody Spurge (Euphorbia dendroides).

The markings around the eyes of this hummer seemed interesting and unusual, but the Merlin app says it's just an Anna's hummingbird.

The mating session was happening near the top of the Succulent Garden, and afterward the female zipped into some nearby cover to preen.

I had thought they were on the ground when I was photographing them, and only when I saw the images did I realize they were on a leaf.

Earlier I'd seen a flock of cedar waxwings gathering at the top of a redwood near the Succulent Garden, but a red-shouldered hawk swooped in and scattered them.

This bunch was near the exit, just south of the little courtyard with the small fountain.

Most of the birds stayed high in the trees, but a few brave ones came down closer.

They didn't seem to really have any berries or anything decent to use in playing their "kissing game" courtship ritual where they pass something back and forth. Here, it looks like they had maybe a tiny piece of wood. Males have a darker chin patch than females, so it looks to me like the male is on the left.

Sometimes courtship rituals go sideways when the overture is rebuffed. The bird on the right aggressively told the other one to back off.

Incoming Mallard at Blue Heron Lake

Things were pretty quiet up at the heron nest, so I amused myself by trying to catch one of the tree swallows as it swooped over the surface of the lake.

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Red Elderberry

 

Song Sparrow & Red Elderberry, Golden Gate Heights Park

I noticed the dark-eyed junco with bits of red berry flesh stuck to its beak and surmised it was eating the berries. I got my camera out and watched the junco disappear deeper into the elderberry thicket, although I figured he'd soon come back out to where the berries were, once he got used to my presence. 

However, it might not have been me that he was worried about, since a sparrow soon dove into the bushes and chased out the junco, who landed on a branch right behind me. There's a lot more red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) in that area than a song sparrow can eat though, and the junco likely figured it could bide its time.

Birds have evolved the ability to eat these berries, which are poisonous to humans (as well as pets and livestock). But if you remove the toxic seeds, the rest of the berry is edible even to us humans. The plant grows all over the country and was used as food and medicine by North American tribes. (The tastier blue elderberry, Sambucus nigra ssp. cerulea, which tends to grow in sunnier spots away from the coast, also provided wood for clapper sticks.)

On a different subject, do you ever associate certain foods with your mother? My mom passed away almost 25 years ago, but I still think of her when I buy cottage cheese. She used to serve it with applesauce, but when I started eating it again not too long ago I used pineapple. I usually finish the pineapple before the cottage cheese, so today, faced with cottage cheese and no pineapple, I was inspired to plop in a few chocolate chips and walnut pieces (which I ordinarily put in my oatmeal). Strange as it may sound, it was delicious.

A couple of band-tailed pigeons flew into view quite near the area where I saw a pair nesting last year. One landed in the top of a redwood, but this one landed out in the open, on a power line.

It's pretty unusual for me to see them in the city at all.

I watched a tiny yellow bullet streak toward me and come to rest among some nearby dandelion-like plants, where the lesser goldfinch feasted on the fluff-tipped seeds (one of which stuck to its head awhile before the wind finally blew it off).

Note the passel of seeds near its left foot.

Just up the road I noticed a large flock of cedar waxwings diving into some heavy coastal tea tree brush (Gaudium laevigatum), which I found perplexing until I noticed a huge pokeberry growing among its branches. Unfortunately, the waxies were going after the pokeberries that were out of view. The bird above stopped very briefly after emerging, then flew up into the safety of a nearby eucalyptus which was ringing with waxwing chatter.

The snowy egret was hunting along the edge of South Lake when it apparently got too close to another large bird who created a bit of a fracas over it.

The other large bird was a black-crowned night heron, here looking very subdued after its recent outburst.

Farther along, a pair of snowy egrets was hunting along the edge of Metson Lake.

I figured the two birds were together, but they barely even acknowledged each other's presence.

I saw the Canada Geese with goslings at Blue Heron Lake yesterday, but I kept riding since they were surrounded by people with their camera-phones out.

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Nectar Robbery

 

Anna's Hummingbird, Nectar Robber

Every now and then I'll notice hummingbirds going for flower nectar by probing between a flower's corolla and calyx rather than going straight down the flower tube. I looked up the phenomenon and was surprised to see it called "nectar robbery." The term "illegitimate" also gets used to describe this behavior, because the bird gets its reward without contacting the anthers or stigmas to pollinate the flower.

But is it still "robbery" if native hummingbirds are doing this to non-native horticultural plantings? Of course not. The natives are simply adapting to the human disturbance of their landscape. Botanists ought to come up with non-pejorative terms for the intelligent behavior of hummingbirds who take advantage of available non-native plant resources.

Anyway, it was great to get out again today after being hunkered down with a cold the last few days. Unfortunately, I had just recently finished watching all eight seasons of Homeland for the second time before I got laid up, but I did enjoy perusing The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2025.

I was interested to see an Allen's hummingbird nectaring on the tiny flowers of white ramping fumitory (Fumaria capreolata). The flowers are cleistogamous, or self-pollinating, so there's no chance of any nectar-robbery shenanigans by the hummingbird. However, its nectar ordinarily attracts bees and flies.

Resting After Visiting Fumitory Nectar Spurs

Instead of going back to the fumitory, the hummingbird flew to a nearby poison hemlock, where it appeared to be more interested in whatever the leaves were offering instead of its umbels of little white flowers.

At Mallard Lake, the usual suspects were taking advantage of the little creek.

Brown Creeper

Fantail

Red-winged Blackbird at Elk Glen Lake

The Wilson's warblers are still singing as they forage through the treetops. This one obliged me by briefly pausing in the open.

Allen's Hummingbird Near The Salvia Patch

The treatment is actually for a pretty yellow-flowered plant called capeweed (Arctotheca prostrata), so it's more of an herbicide treatment.

This devil's coach-horse beetle (Ocypus olens) had just avoided being eaten by a robin that hopped over from the grass to give it a go. The beetle raised its abdomen and presumably fired off its stink glands since the bird dropped it from its beak almost instantly.

The robin went back to foraging in the grass where it appeared to keep an eye out for predators flying above. After all, a robin doesn't have a stink gland to fall back on....

The paper wasp nest is still coming along.

Several blue-eyed darners were buzzing about near the cattails at Metson Lake (where I saw a female hummingbird collecting cattail fluff; apparently nesting season is still on, a second clutch in the making).

The two juveniles I've previously photographed at Blue Heron Lake are getting big, but are still attached to their nest.

No More Room For Mama

This screenshot is from the latest upgrade to Photoshop. Makes me wonder if human models are going to become a thing of the past.

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Baby Bushtit

 

Stranded Bushtit Fledgling, Cole Valley

If anything can be cuter than a little bitty bushtit, it's gotta be a baby bushtit. Because it was messing around the side of a car, I first thought the tiny bird was fighting with its mirror image, as some birds do. But when it tried to fly into a nearby tree I could see that it was just a fledgling. It failed to reach even the first branches of the tree, then fluttered across the sidewalk onto a home's door frame, then down to the ground, and then back onto parked cars, silent all the while. 

I looked around and kept my ears out for an adult bushtit, but none appeared. I cringed as the fledgling flew weakly across Cole Street, hoping it wouldn't get hit by a car, and was glad when it landed on the roof of a parked pickup truck. It was tuckered out by then and settled down, even closing its eyes for a time.

The surreal part of the incident was watching the fledgling's struggle while no one else walking by even noticed the bird. I left hoping an adult bushtit would come to the rescue before a passing raven took notice of the helpless little guy.

Ornate Leaf in Golden Gate Park

The squirrel nipped off the flower top of a plant (Pentaglottis sempervirens) growing at the base of the redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) on the edge of the AIDS Memorial Grove, ate the good parts, then resumed foraging without returning to the plant. There's no FDA to ensure the safety of what a wild animal eats, so they don't necessarily gorge themselves on any one thing, just in case it's toxic in large amounts. Wikipedia says the flowers of this plant are edible, the roots are toxic, and the leaves are medicinal.

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