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| The three-heron nest. |
I ride my bike past Stow Lake almost every day and keep thinking I should try to photograph the nesting great blue herons, so yesterday afternoon I finally went down there with the FZ80. There were two nests on the little island east of Strawberry Hill. One is packed with three young herons, and the other had two.
I took a seat on a bench and watched and waited, biding my time watching baby swallows, swimming turtles, soaring red-tails, and numerous paddle-boaters, hoping a parent would fly back from their hunting grounds to feed them. Maybe an hour passed before an adult finally showed up at the two-heron nest.
After the all-too-short feeding frenzy I rode down to the Cliff House to check out the pelicans on Seal Rocks. I hoped to photograph the huge numbers of them that I had seen there a few days ago during a ride with my wife, remembering all the cormorants I'd seen resting on the rocks back in early May, when there were no pelicans at all.
I was surprised to see that the Giant Camera was open, although it seemed a little forlorn with so little tourist traffic around the the still-defunct Cliff House.
The fog had begun to clear by the time I returned to Stow Lake, and I actually had some great light from my new position on Strawberry Hill. Again I waited and waited for an adult to show up, and when one finally did, it flew to the three-heron nest which was almost completely hidden from my new vantage point. Despite the excellent light and vantage point I had on the two-heron nest, no adult showed up, and I finally had to call it quits at 5 o'clock so I could get home for dinner.
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| Three Hungry Swallows |
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| Up Periscope |
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| Feeding time at the two-heron nest. |
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| The adult heron paid no mind to several nearby groups of people with their blankets laid out. |
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| The main menu item for the young herons back at the nest is probably gophers. This heron's quick stab was a miss. |
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| Numerous pelicans resting on Seal Rocks. |
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| Surf-fishing off Sutro Baths. |
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| The Camera Obscura has re-opened (though maybe just on weekends). |
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| Mostly fog-free afternoon light on a little playful activity at the two-heron nest. |
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| An adult flies away from the obscured three-heron nest after a quick and noisy feeding. Even with both parents presumably feeding the young, their arrivals were few and far between. |
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| Mama quacker. |
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