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| Red-shafted Flicker (aka Northern Flicker), San Francisco Botanical Garden |
My wife had gone with a friend to the Death Cafe, and I was in the botanical garden thinking it was pretty dead in there. I'd neither seen nor heard many birds, and I'd only photographed a dead monarch butterfly caught in a spider snare, and a nearby spider that had just snagged its next meal. But back in the Children's Garden I was moving slowly, watching a group of sparrows and trying not to send them all diving for cover -- not because I wanted to photograph them, but just to see if I could pull it off -- when I noticed the flicker.
The flicker obviously spotted me, but for once it didn't immediately dart for cover. I watched as it used its big beefy beak to probe for insects, stirring up a colony of tiny ants on a tree stump in the process, and I snapped a few photos through all kinds of intervening grass and branches before it finally bounded into the open.
When it moved back into a less open area I turned my attention to a California towhee that appeared to be dust-bathing. The thing is, it wasn't bathing so much as just easing itself into a soft divot on the ground to use as a comfy bed for resting and preening.
Eventually a frozen pizza and a beer were calling me home to lunch, so I started making my way back to my bike. I was almost out of the garden when a ruby-crowned kinglet showed up, and then a Townsend's warbler. I'd stumbled on another small birdy area right next to the parking lot behind the Hall of Flowers. Beer and pizza could wait.
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| The monarch probably tore up the spider web as it struggled in vain to free itself. A fly was perched on the butterfly's body. |
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| As I took a step or two past the monarch, this orb-weaver suddenly scuttled across its web to snag a tiny beetle. |
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| Flicker at Rest |
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| Probing for Insects |
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| California Towhee on a Branch |
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| Towhee Preening its Feathers |
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| Towhee at Rest |
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| I'd been wondering where they put the pitcher plants, and I found at least some of them in the Children's Garden. The carnivorous plant box that used to be kept by the old greenhouse near the California Garden also had sundews, but I couldn't find any in this box. Maybe just the wrong season. |
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| I'd seen some impressive chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms on a stump in the Children's Garden, but this little gilled mushroom among the redwoods surprised me more. |
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| Speedy Little Fellow |
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| Townsend's Warbler |
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| I wasn't sure it was a ruby-crowned kinglet until I saw this through my lens. |
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