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| Red Shouldered Hawk Sounding Off |
I took a few hours between storms to enjoy a stroll around Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park. It was so sunny this morning that it was hard to believe a dramatic change is in store. It's about noon now, and the wind is gusting pretty strong, about 17 mph, with clouds blowing in from the west.
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| Lone Magnolia Blossom |
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| More Magnolia |
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| Forget-Me-Not |
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| Magnolia Bud |
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| Silk Tassel Bush |
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| This red-shouldered hawk swooped onto the branch with a nice bunch of salad greens in its talons. The main course was somewhere inside the bunch. |
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| The hawk eventually tossed away the greens. |
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| A bunch of golden-crowned sparrows were munching on willow pollen back in the Children's Garden. |
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| I thought this was some kind of super-interesting new bird I'd never seen before, and I only managed to catch this one sharp image as it flittered around near the surface of a small pond. There doesn't appear to be any online bird identifier similar to what you can get on your phone, so I had to take a phone snap of the image on my computer screen to get it into the Merlin ID app. I had to laugh when the ID came up: song sparrow. D'oh! So pretty from this angle though. |
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| It was interesting to be reminded again how even a sparrow can look huge compared to a yellow-rumped warbler or, as we have here, a townsend's warbler. |
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| Downy Woodpecker |
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| It's still autumn for some of the trees in the botanic garden. |
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| There was a large patch of Peziza cup fungus in some wood chips near the bamboo trail. |
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| Also in the same patch of wood chips, these jumbo Agaricus pancakes (with size 10-1/2 shoe). |
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| Rocky Outcrop near Grandview Park |
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| Succulent Garden on 14th Avenue |
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| One more view of Burney Falls that I forgot I had. The trail that's closing in April makes a circle around the falls, with a bridge that gets you over the river upstream. |
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