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| G-Dog, the Grandview Park Coyote |
I don't know if this is the same female coyote I saw on the day the comet didn't come out to play. I don't even know if this coyote is female since it only pooped but didn't pee. Hence the gender-nonspecific name of G-Dog (G-Wiz came in second).
Tuesday's walk is the one that covers parts of the Sunset Parkway and Golden Gate Park in addition to Grandview Park (and the Hidden Garden Steps), and all of today's photos came just from the walk, which took three hours. By the time I got home I wasn't sure if I still had the energy for a bike ride, but the day just doesn't seem complete without both the walk and the ride, so off I went. Thankfully I wasn't tempted to take out my camera even once on the ride.
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| At first glance I wondered if someone had just put up one of those fake owls to scare pigeons away. But then I saw its head move. |
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| Red-shouldered Hawk, Noriega Street, Outer Sunset |
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| Who can resist photographing a resting bluebird? For a sense of scale, note the ant near the bird's right foot ;).... |
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| The bluebird's partner was kind enough to stand in profile to show off its brilliant blue feathers. |
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| This townsend's warbler was feeding tantalizingly close to me in a cypress tree, yet it moved around so quickly, and was so often concealed behind leaves and branches, that it was very hard to photograph. |
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| And of course the one time I caught it out in the open, its eyes were invisible. |
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| For all the time I spent craning my neck to try to get the perfect shot, I gave up to try another day when it flew high into another tree. |
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| Instead, I settled for this house finch who at least knew how to stand still in the nice morning light. |
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| I saw this red-shouldered hawk swoop to the ground near Elk Glen Lake and went over to investigate. I snapped this photo just as it was about to leap into flight. |
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| It didn't go very far before finding a perch. At first I was behind the hawk and photographed it with strong backlight, then I was able to move around and catch it in sidelight, and it still hadn't flown away when I got around to its front, so I got this shot -- doing its KEER! KEER! KEER! thing to boot -- that was preferable to all the others. |
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| I'd spent quite a bit of time at Elk Glen Lake trying to photograph townsends and yellow warblers, a brown creeper, and a western flycatcher, all of which were foraging on an oak tree in terrible light and with lots of cover. I didn't get a single keeper. Heading home via the Hidden Garden Steps I was reminded of what I saw last week -- that the parks department had cleared leaves from the steps and the rain gutter, and had ripped out the foxglove in the process. |
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| Of course I was hoping to see a coyote when I reached Grandview Park, and I was delighted/stoked when I actually did. |
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| I lost track of the coyote when it ducked behind some coyote brush, so I had to climb the stairs to get above it, and I was glad once again to spot it in some deep grass. |
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| The coyote appeared to be heading for the exit near the bottom of the hill where 14th and 15th avenues come together, when this guy came along with his dog. I'm sure they never noticed the coyote, which was downwind of the dog. |
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| The coyote decided to stick around after all, and took care of some business... |
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| ...before heading back out on the hunt for gophers. |
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| Although its pounce was unsuccessful, subsequent digging eventually netted this poor gopher. |
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| Sometimes a coyote will give you a funny look. |
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| I began the walk with a hawk perched on an apartment building and ended with a coyote in the street, taking a detour around some blackberry bramble. The urban wild life. |
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