Another Velella Stranding

 

Beautiful Morning at Ocean Beach

It was a joy and a relief to wake up to sun and clouds this morning instead of another day of heavy fog. I couldn't believe it was already 64 degrees when I headed out the door at 8:30.

As I visually scouted the shoreline at Ocean Beach I didn't see any shorebirds to capture my interest, nor did I see any sign of another stranding of by-the-wind sailors. Only when I later biked down to the Cliff House was I sort of shocked to see the long, sinuous wrack lines of countless dead animals. 

Apparently May and June are peak times for Velella strandings, especially when El Niño conditions are brewing. When they're in their element, floating in the open oceans of tropical and subtropical waters, Velella eat plankton and are in turn eaten by sea snails and sea slugs (and occasionally by gulls).

Looks like the wasp nest was attacked again. Despite the repeated attacks, the wasps diligently keep on truckin'.

Bison Enjoying the Sun

I was surprised to see a raven feeding on a dead gopher on the west side of North Lake. I wondered how the raven managed to take possession of it. Did a hawk drop it while being mobbed by crows and/or ravens? Did it simply die in the open? Or could a raven could actually catch and kill a gopher on its own?

Wrack Lines of By-the-Wind Sailors

Another odd bit of feeding behavior that I saw recently was in the neighbor's oak tree -- a squirrel stripping and eating tree bark.

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Insect Life

 

Stiletto Fly on Blackberry Leaf, San Francisco Presidio

I've been thinking about photographing the diversity of grasses I find around the city, but I quickly realized when I tried to get started this morning that it was virtually impossible to get good shots in the field. When I last photographed grasses (from Mt. Tam), I collected them and set them up at home where I could have better controls. Luckily, I've also been thinking about photographing insects, so that's what I ended up doing today.

It didn't seem like I was seeing many insects -- and then a light rain started, sending me under some trees for cover -- but I came home with a decent assortment, all shot around the Andrew Goldsworthy Spire and across the street between Inspiration Point and El Polin Spring. Much of the latter area is fenced off, so I was only hunting along the edges of the trail (which is bike-legal).

It's been a long time since I photographed insects, and I ended up using an aperture of f/11 which serves well for tidepools. Now I see that I really should have used an even smaller aperture to increase depth of field for these tiny subjects. Next time.

I uploaded these to iNaturalist and got some preliminary IDs, but too preliminary to post here.

Variable Duskyface Fly (Melanostoma mellinum)

Western Aphid Eater (Eupeodes fumipennis)

Buckeye (Junonia sp.)

Variable Checkerspot (Euphydryas chalcedona)

Western Fence Lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis)

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Just Us Locals

 

Red-shouldered Hawk, Golden Gate Park

Temps in the low 50s, windy, dense fog swirling nearly to the point of drizzle, and most of the tourists such as yellow-rumped and Townsend's warblers gone for the season, taking their bright splashes of color with them. A few squirrels foraging in the Oak Woodlands, clattering through dry leaves and jumping into trees to escape an approaching human, but doing it just to add a little spice to a gray, ho-hum day.

I didn't envy the red-shouldered hawk overlooking the Fuchsia Dell and Horseshoe Courts, feathers flickering in the chilly wind while looking for a bird or mouse to forget, just for a moment, that the world can be a dangerous place. 

Wait, did I say I didn't envy the hawk? That might not be quite true. No, not quite true.

Even more envious was the song sparrow walking on water at Lily Lake, where the lily pads and duckweed spread out a chlorophyll carpet for an ounce of dinosaur fluff gleening tiny seeds.

Up on Whiskey Hill I followed the sound of a telltale cheep to a hummingbird that appeared to be building a new nest on an oak branch swaying in the wind. She sat in the middle of her shallow bed of lichen, moss, and fluff, and used her beak to make a couple of minor adjustments to the edges. Farther along I spotted another hummingbird that looked so fresh and athletic that I suspect it was probably born and fledged nearby within the last month or so.

Song Sparrow, Lily Lake

Iris at Lily Lake

Hummingbird Starting Her Nest

Whiskey Hill Hummer

Youthful Beauty

Dark-eyed Junco, Blending In

I thought the tapping I heard must belong to a woodpecker, but it turned out to be this little pygmy nuthatch.

Some interesting mushrooms growing in the wood chips just west of the stalactite tunnel at Alvord Lake.

There was a troop of these big Agaricus mushrooms in the leaf litter at the SF Botanical Garden (that I forgot to post yesterday).

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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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