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| Whimbrel Tussle |
Not the greatest pix, but I couldn't resist posting shots of a flock of whimbrels that was feeding and tussling on the beach near Sutro Baths late yesterday morning.
I only recently started including the Cliff House on my daily bike ride, and when I started I figured there would be very little change from day to day. So far I've been pleasantly surprised by nuances in pelican numbers, sun vs. fog, surfable waves or just choppy surf, the coming and going of surf fishermen (both on the beach and in boats close to shore), sea stars invading the mussel beds on Seal Rocks, and now the return of the whimbrels. [UPDATE: The next day there were no birds of any kind on the same stretch of beach.]
In other local news, Heckle and Jeckle (as I call them) weren't resting on the Murphy Windmill as they often do (either singly or together), nor were they sitting together in a tree. This time they were resting like a pair of chimney gargoyles on the Millwright Cottage next to the windmill. They both appeared to be quite damp and were busy preening their feathers. Their tail feathers are finally turning red.
Farther east on MLK Drive I was sorry to see that the wasp nest had been obliterated, and not by an accidental sprinkler incident, but by the intentional use of pesticides (prallethrin and deltamethrin, according to a sign at the kill site). I'd looked forward to monitoring the nest over its natural lifetime.
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One Whimbrel
(Note all the peck marks in the sand where the flock had been probing for mole crabs.) |
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| Two Whimbrels |
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| Many Whimbrels |
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| The cormorants don't usually pass by the Cliff House this close to shore. |
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| Likewise for the black oystercatchers. It was interesting to see so much energetic bird activity on such a foggy and chilly summer day. |
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| Heckle and Jeckle on the Millwright Cottage |
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| Heckle |
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| Jeckle |
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Wasp Nest Remainders
(A few scraps of the papery outer nest also littered the ground, but nowhere near enough to account for the whole thing.) |
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| For what it's worth, I was able to watch the wasps from directly beneath the nest several times without stirring them to anger. I'm sorry to see that the park chose to eradicate these keen killers of aphids and other garden pests. |
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