Birdland!

 

Red-naped Sapsucker, Elk Glen Lake

I finally broke down and went birding instead of doing my usual Tuesday walk. Reports of a Red-naped Sapsucker and a Summer Tanager are what did it. My walk would have taken me right past the sapsucker, but there's no way I was going to lug my full-frame camera around on the whole walk. 

Several birders also came down to view the sapsucker, and I joined them and several others later at the San Francisco Botanical Garden. 

I'd gone to the SFBG to look for the summer tanager, but new reports had come in of an even more rare Yellow-green Vireo and, a little later, a Blackburnian Warbler, so I tagged along with the birding pros. I felt like a birder myself while some of us were using binoculars to look for the vireo way up in the high branches of a eucalyptus when suddenly another birder broke into the open nearby and excitedly announed to our group that he'd seen it elsewhere. Like a shot, our whole group broke into a jog to find the celebrity vireo. Even better, we all got to see it.

The blackburnian warbler, not so much. But it was still an excellent morning to be wandering around in Birdland.

I also met another photographer who recommended a DxO product for doing noise reduction. I checked it out and ended up buying DxO PureRAW 6 which works as a Lightroom plug-in. It's so much faster than Lightroom's denoise feature that I ended up using it on all the images in today's post, not just the ones shot at ISO 10000 and up.

Red-naped Sapsucker

The person who reported the summer tanager first saw it bathing in the water fountain near the SFBG entrance. It had later been seen in the company of a robin. I sat and watched the robins bathe for a while, but no tanager showed up to join the party.

In a tree near the fountain, a pair of Northern Flickers was having a noisy chit-chat.

They allowed me to watch for quite a while, keeping up the chit-chat and occasionally facing each other while never making physical contact.

A Nuttall's Woodpecker started up a different trunk on the same tree and was paid no mind by the flickers.

I finally saw a summer tanager back on the monkey's hand tree.

Unfortunately, no flowers were in bloom, so there was nothing to keep the birds interested and in one place.

I'd hoped to see a red male, but I was happy enough to spot the yellow one and add a new species to my iNaturalist observations.

Raising its crown feathers.

A Western Tanager also dropped by the monkey's hand tree.

Lookin' purty.

I'd hoped the new, rare vireo might turn up in this tree poppy where I photographed western warbling vireos last month. This time I caught a Song Sparrow snagging a seed instead.

Finally, well worth jogging for, the esteemed Yellow-green Vireo made its grand entrance.

It did play hard to get, though.

I finally got to photograph my first-of-season Orange-crowned Warbler. It snagged a tiny caterpillar from under a leaf, very near the vireo's tree.

A nearby Red-breasted Sapsucker drew me farther away from the vireo, and it ate a couple of berberis/mahonia berries. I'm surprised more birds don't go after them, as they taste good even to me.

A sign below the tree identified it as Mahonia oiwakensis, but botanists now consider the Mahonia genus to be part of Berberis.

A resident Anna's Hummingbird, meanwhile, was nectaring on its flowers and providing pollination service.

I don't think she cares whether it's called Mahonia or Berberis. Tastes just as good.

The Blackburnian warbler had been spotted in the Children's Garden, so I headed back there and stopped to watch some Pygmy Nuthatches on the prowl.

A Fox Sparrow had been kicking in the dirt on the ground but got spooked up into this brittle-looking, leafless bush.

I try to resist photographing every Townsend's Warbler I see, but sometimes resistance is futile.

Black Phoebe, looking demure on a branch above the frog pond.

This is the same bird, having come down for a drink.

The floating sticks made a nice drinking perch.

A Ruby-crowned Kinglet dropped by as I was leaving the Children's Garden.

Another Townsend's warbler got me to stop by the Schotia brachypetala on my way back to my bike.

Pygmy nuthatches were in there, too, as usual.

A Yellow-rumped Warbler also got in on the action, but was very shy and flew away after taking a quick sip of nectar.

This plant is in the legume family and reminds me of coral trees. I first encountered coral trees in Santa Barbara, and when I grasped a group of flowers to get a better look at them, a huge amount of nectar spilled out and got all over me.

Hummer in the Agapanthus.

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Tropical Kingbird

 

Tropical Kingbird, Lake Merced

Creature of habit that I am, I have four standard walking routes and two standard bike routes for my daily hike-and-bike sessions. Today I was lucky to get a break from the routine that satisfied both my desire to photograph interesting birds and my desire to get in a decent bike ride. The bird had been reported at Lake Merced, so I rode all the way down Ortega Street to the beach, then turned south to reach the lake. After photographing the bird at the concrete bridge I circumnavigated the lake, then picked up Sloat to return via Sunset Dunes Park and Golden Gate Park.

If I had seen this bird on my own I might have confused it with a Western Kingbird, which looks quite similar and whose breeding range includes parts of California.

Tropical Kingbirds, however, ain't from around these parts. When around people, they no doubt hear a lot more Portuguese and Spanish than they do English. A tiny bit of their breeding range rises into Arizona, but their year-round range extends deep into South America (although they're often seen along the West Coast in fall, and as far north as Canada). 

Despite having to point my camera lens into the sun, I lucked out almost immediately when a kingbird landed on some bare branches right in front of me. And then I double lucked out when a second kingbird landed, although the two didn't stick around very long. 

Twice As Tropical

Até Mais!

By 10:30, the sun was starting to come out at Lake Merced.

The kingbird is a flycatcher and rarely perched for more than a few seconds before hawking into the air to try to capture a passing insect.

When the tropical kingbirds finally ditched me, I checked out the lake, where I soon spotted a lone White-fronted Goose paddling around.

It dipped its beak in the water to drink a couple of times.

It kept getting closer as I watched through my lens, eventually landing on the beach to join several mallards who had their beaks tucked into their wing feathers, snoozing.

One of the "mallards" paddling around just offshore made a strange sound, and I saw that it was actually a Green-winged Teal when I zoomed in on it. She, too, soon landed on the beach.

She waited to get her feet on land before taking a drink.

Some Canada Geese flew over the lake in the distance, passing over a flock of gulls.

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Furtive Feathers

 

Northern Flicker, SF Botanical Garden

I had the celebrity warbler in my sights this morning but couldn't lock focus on it during the couple of seconds I had it in view as it furtively hopped along a network of thin branches deep within a chaos-world of willow leaves at Blue Heron Lake. Numerous birders were converged on the spot, and just about everyone got a look at the Prothonotary Warbler, but getting a clear photo was another matter, at least for me (phuzzy photo below). 

I don't know how long I was there before I finally gave up. Eventually I just wanted to photograph some birds -- any birds -- so I biked over to the Botanical Garden, where the numbers of Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Hermit Thrush, and Yellow-rumped and Townsend's Warblers, have increased quite a bit since my last visit.

As always, it was a beautiful thing to observe these incredible flying animals in such lush surroundings. Last Thursday I'd biked over to the autumn-dry chaparral of the Marin Headlands in the hope of seeing an otter, bobcat, or rattlesnake -- a few wild animals you don't see in San Francisco. The prickly-dry, rolling hills of Gerbode Valley harbored the promise of wild critters, but that is all. The actual wildlife remained concealed. Rodeo Lagoon harbored a few ducks but no otters.

House Finch on Coyote Brush, Rodeo Lagoon

Believe it or not, the iNaturalist app suggested the correct ID for the Prothonotary Warbler seen at Blue Heron Lake despite the poor photo quality.

A Chestnut-backed Chickadee stopped by for a drink at some bottlebrush blossoms in the SF Botanical Garden.

I heard the calls of a Northern Flicker getting closer and closer, and eventually it landed within view.

I thought it would immediately fly away when it saw me, but it was more interested in feeding than fleeing.

I couldn't tell if it was interested in seeds or insects.

A not-very-yellow Yellow-rumped Warbler.

Getting better....

That's more like it.

A fox squirrel was going to town on the Chilean rhubarb fruits.

A Red-tailed Hawk attracted a lot of attention when it flew into a spruce tree near the Waterfowl Pond. Here its feathers are fluffled during a moment of preening.

Townsend's Warbler

I heard many calls of Golden-crowned Sparrows while I was out, but I rarely saw one. They are very well-camouflaged as they feed along the ground.

I wondered if this was the same Red-shouldered Hawk I recently encountered as it perched on a fence on the perimeter of the Children's Garden. This one began on the fence but soon flew a short distance into nearby tree branches.

There were quite a few Hermit Thrushes out today, and some of them were chasing each other around, claiming territories of their own.

Here's a larger thrush, the American Robin. A few robins and a couple of hermit thrushes were furtively entering a bush to claim its berries.

Ruby-crowned Kinglets like to give away their locations with characteristic calls and don't seem to mind being close to people.

They probably give people little thought as they dart around the branches of trees and shrubs, rarely giving a photographer a clear view. 

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