 |
| Ginkgo Leaves, San Francisco Botanical Garden |
It was refreshingly cool and breezy down in Golden Gate Park this morning. Our apartment is only at about 700 feet in elevation, but it's quite a bit warmer up here. The temperature dropped deliciously as I biked down the hill. The National Weather Service reported the Sunset District was 61 degrees this morning, but it was 75 here at home, and that was as cool as it got all night.
I don't love it, but I'm not complaining. I know we still have it easy compared to just about everywhere else in the state.
As I passed the entrance to the Botanical Garden I encountered a group of photographers with long lenses trained on the small fountain next to the library building. No birds had shown up yet, and the fountain was still in shade. I kept going, following a line of raccoon tracks in the gravel.
Back at the Children's Garden I didn't see any sign of the ground squirrels. I wondered if it was already too hot or something, but then as I was looking for birds I spotted a coyote. Another bird photographer had already been watching it, and the coyote gave us the slip. I checked a couple of ground squirrel burrow entrances, and they didn't appear to have been discovered by the coyote. I thought it was interesting that another animal was already in there so soon after park authorities had the previous residents shot [see the Coyote Lady's 9/7 update].
 |
| A Tangle of Woven Webs |
 |
| Snare Repair, No. 1 |
 |
| Snare Repair, No. 2 |
 |
| I go back and forth between yellow warbler and orange-crowned warbler, and today I'm going with yellow warbler. [UPDATE: Wrong! It's an orange-crowned warbler.] |
 |
| Cooper's Hawk |
 |
| The Steller's jay was looking for somewhere to hide its peanut, maybe figuring it would be camouflaged among cypress cones. |
 |
| Red-shouldered Hawk |
 |
| Fall Colors |
 |
| These speedy little yellow-rumpers are much easier to see than to photograph. |
 |
| My first hermit thrush in a while. |
 |
Orange-crowned warbler feeding on South African Schotia brachypetala flowers (in the pea family).
Once again while trying to get shots of the warblers I accidentally turned on exposure-bracketing, but at least this time I found it much easier to turn off. If you press the wheel to dial in some exposure compensation, but press the cursor instead of turning the wheel, you end up in bracketing mode.
One other note, I wish the Panasonic FZ80D would let you set shutter priority at 1/500th sec. (for example) and have the camera automatically increase ISO after the widest aperture is reached. Currently the viewfinder just goes black unless you increase ISO manually. |
* * *
