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| Hawk's Leap Into Flight |
I suspect the hawk above is the same youngster from my last post. It was hunting in the same general area today, and I had to stop to photograph it when I saw it perched atop an almost completely delimbed snag. It was so brazenly out in the open that I was surprised it wasn't being hounded by crows or jays, or even robins or hummingbirds.
It was kind of a hawky day, with a pair of red-tails gliding on the strong onshore winds down by Ocean Beach, and several red-shouldered hawks screeching to each other here and there.
At Metson Lake the other day, I saw (but didn't stop to photograph) a black-crowned night heron. It's been a while since I've seen one there, and when I checked today it was gone, replaced by a great blue heron busily preening its feathers.
I started the day with a walk out over Parnassus Heights and down through Cole Valley that segued into a loop through the Haight and a meander through Golden Gate Park before heading home through the Inner Sunset, where I was glad to see the hardware store being rebuilt after having been destroyed by fire back in August 2023.
Along the way I carried on the usual philosophical discourse with myself, this time about how we form our worldviews, and to what extent our worldviews are formed for us by mass media and social media, friends and family, thought leaders and influencers. It's so easy to just stay in our bubbles and declare anything outside the bubble to be nonsense, or simply not worth the calories it takes to cogitate on it.
For me, one of the many beauties of being in nature is having respite from all the clamoring voices trying to shape my worldview. In nature I can simply be in the world and perceive it directly (or at least as directly as my rose-colored glasses will allow). And if I pass any judgment, it's aesthetic rather than moral, bestowing a lowering of the blood pressure rather than a raising of it....
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| Young Red-Tailed Hawk in Flight Near Beach Chalet |
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| Out beyond the rip currents, the meeting of two ships: the five-year-old Singapore-flagged YM Warranty container ship, recently in Long Beach and heading to Oakland, prepares to pass in front of the eight-year-old Liberian-flagged bulk carrier Ken Moonys, recently in Stockton and heading to Los Angeles. |
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| Sinuous Beauty at Metson Lake |
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| Perch With Unobstructed View |
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| Attack! |
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| The young hunter missed on this try, then circled around to perch on another nearby snag. |
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| I stopped to check out the Rose Garden in Golden Gate Park, but was more interested in the adjacent Heroes Redwood Grove, a fittingly peaceful tribute, first planted in 1919, to fallen veterans of the First World War. |
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| Second time I couldn't resist the dahlia in the Garden for the Environment. |
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| King of the Eucalyptus, Sharon Meadow |
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