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| Black-throated Gray Warbler, aka GBGB Bird |
Not to be confused with the tookie-tookie bird, it's pronounced "Jee-Bee-Jee-Bee," kind of like the old New York punk-rock venue CBGB. I've noticed its melodious call on Mt. Tamalpais from time to time over the years, and thanks to the Merlin Bird ID app on my phone I was finally able to find its official name: black-throated gray warbler. Although I've never been able to put my eyes on one on Mt. Tam, I actually had photographed one once before, in October 2009 at Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park.
When I tried to confirm the call on All About Birds, only the version recorded on April 14, 1986 on this page matched the jee-bee-jee-bee-jee-bee that I hear on Mt. Tam. The other calls were quite different. I've also noticed on my city walks recently that white-crowned sparrows (probably one of the most commonly heard songbirds in San Francisco) have slightly different songs from one neighborhood to another. It's just confusing enough to my untrained ears that I recently had to use Merlin to verify that a song sparrow was in fact a song sparrow and not a white-crowned sparrow with a unique call.
I most recently invoked the Merlin app on the GBGB bird when I was on Mt. Tam on Thursday. In addition to the target bird, the app also recorded (from the same location) brown creeper, acorn woodpecker, red-breasted nuthatch, northern flicker, wild turkey, hermit thrush, pacific-slope flycatcher, brown-headed cowbird, purple finch, and warbling vireo. It all made an excellent soundscape to enjoy with the little picnic lunch I'd brought with me.
Anyway, I had some spare time this morning and walked down the hill to Strybing Arboretum to see what birds I might find. I brought my very compact FZ80, but envied a couple of other photographers with nicer cameras that were still light enough for hand-held shots. One guy had an Olympus with what he said was a 600mm lens that looked surprisingly small. I hadn't been inside the arboretum in a good while, and it was interesting to see the changes around the nursery greenhouse and pond by the California Garden, and some nice upgrades to the Children's Garden (which even had some children in it).
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| A pair of Pacific Wrens were calling like crazy from nearby trees, but I couldn't get a decent picture, so I settled for this shot of iris on the edge of the Dwarf Conifer Pond. |
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| Anna's Hummingbird |
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| This pugnacious Allen's Hummingbird was spending so much time chasing away other hummers, like the Anna's above, that I wondered when it found time to eat enough to maintain its energy. |
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| Much of the old California Pipevine area has been razed during construction of the area around the new nursery greenhouse, but there must be enough still around to support Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies like this one gathering nectar from Sticky Monkey Flower. |
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| A pair of House Finches keeps watch from an old Yucca branch in the Succulent Garden. |
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I waited with a couple other photographers to catch one of these Tree Swallows entering and/or exiting one of the nest holes in this old Yucca stalk, but I gave up before seeing it happen.
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| Just above the Succulent Garden, a Red-shouldered Hawk was bringing material to its nest higher up in this Eucalyptus tree. |
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