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| Moody Morning |
Half a block into Tuesday's morning walk I thought about turning around to grab a rain jacket. There was just enough moisture in the air to bead on my glasses and dampen the street, and dark clouds were floating like ghost ships over the city. There had been no actual rain in the forecast, though, so I continued on. Luckily it's been one of those days that just looks like rain.
Although I brought the point-n-shoot, I saw very few birds along the Sunset greenbelt. Just the usual finches and nuthatches, and the western bluebirds were nowhere to be seen. After picking up a couple of grocery items at the store I headed back up the hill by way of the 15th Avenue steps, which shows on Google Maps as being a city park. It's a block east of the well-known Hidden Garden Steps which, thanks to their colorful tiles, are labeled a tourist attraction. I'd hoped for some bird action in the oaks and other trees, but nothing doing.
Farther up the hill I spotted a garden snail on a log along Grandview Park. It was so completely stretched out of its shell that it looked quite graceful and beautiful. That was my first snapshot of the day, and as usual I figured it could well be my last. I never know what's going to attract my attention until it happens.
Just a few steps past the snail I found some coyote scat. I'd already seen, just that morning, a couple others on the steep Mount Avenue stairway that connects 14th and 15th avenues, so I wasn't too impressed. But then a little movement up the hill drew my attention to the coyote itself, and I was glad I still had my camera out from having shot the snail. The coyote was mostly hidden by brush, but at one point he was in the open, and quickly heading away from me. I gave a little whistle, and sure enough he stopped and looked back.
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| Nearly Nude Garden Snail |
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| Coyote Scat, Coyote Brush (a fall-flowering shrub), and... |
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| Coyote, Grandview Park |
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| I hiked the steps to the top of Grandview Park to see if I could make any further observations of the coyote, but it had either left the area or found a nice place in the brush to lay low for a while. A few purple bush lupines were still in bloom. |
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| White-crowned sparrows were busy chasing each other, eating seeds, hiding from predators, and putting up with a photographer around the base of the park. |
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| Here's a white-crowned sparrow with seeds in his beak, surrounded by coast buckwheat seed heads. I'm not sure what the yellow-flowered plant is. |
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| This fluffy little ball of sparrow still hasn't grown out his tail feathers. |
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| It was moody and broody down by the ocean. |
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| Below the Cliff House |
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| Cliff House Viewing Deck |
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| I was impressed to see three wandering tattlers occasionally braving the crashing shorebreak to probe the sand for mole crabs. |
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| The Pelican King |
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| The Pilot Vessel |
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The Vessel Being Piloted
(The northernmost Seal Rocks are in the foreground. The huge -- longer than a football field -- Japan-flagged container ship One Manhattan, was heading to the Port of Oakland.) |
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| No sign of Kingsley today, but a great blue heron was back at Metson Lake. (No sign of Hank the coyote in a while either.) |
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| A squirrel in my neighbor's oak tree was chattering alarm calls again when I got home, so I quietly went to investigate, hoping to catch a hawk unawares (unlike last time). But the hawk was probably long gone. The squirrel, evidently a female, calmed down after I showed myself, then briefly hopped around in the crown of the tree to look for acorns before bounding away. Once again, our garden was full of little squirrel holes dug into the ground, and I still hope it's eating Oxalis nuts. |
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