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| Coyote, Golden Gate Park |
Having decided against driving up to Taylor Creek to see a lackluster salmon run a little while ago, I figured my next trip would be up the Sacramento Valley to Mt. Shasta and the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge. I was looking forward to photographing Mt. Shasta with a fresh coat of snow on it, then visiting the cacophonous ruckus of countless geese at the refuge.
Well, the snow has arrived, but unfortunately, as a story in The Guardian told it a couple of weeks ago, nearly 100,000 birds have recently died of botulism in "the worst such outbreak at the lake ever recorded." It makes my heart sick to know that things have gotten so bad up there. The natural world of even just earlier this century has been taking a beating, with scorching summers, wildfires and smoke, disappointing tidepools, and massive die-offs of fish and birds.
I'd been looking forward to exploring nature around the state during retirement, but I can't quite rationalize burning a lot of gasoline to visit places where we've already put nature under seige with an overheating planet. Instead, it looks like I'll continue to concentrate my nature-watching right here in San Francisco, where I can get my fix on foot and bicycle.
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| An American lady butterfly soaks up the morning rays along the Sunset Parkway. |
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| A Gathering of Pigeons, Underpass at Lincoln & Sunset |
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| Kinglet in the Fall Foliage, Golden Gate Park |
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| Bushtit (Seemingly) at Rest |
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| As I began walking around Elk Glen Lake, I was surprised to see this red-shouldered hawk resting nonchalantly on a pine bough only a few feet higher than my head. It looks like the pupil in the sunlit eye is smaller than the one in the shaded eye, but I think it's just an illusion caused by the lack of contrast in the shaded eye. |
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| I suspect it's the same hawk I encountered in the same area last week. |
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| I finally caught a squirrel in the act of munching on the stems of this tree. I still couldn't tell whether it also eats the berries (only some of which were ripe). After rasping away at the stem for a bit, the squirrel unceremoniously drops the rest of the branch onto the ground, which is littered with the things. |
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| Badass Song Sparrow |
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| Townsend's Warbler Framed by Leaves, North Lake |
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| A great blue heron was back at Metson Lake, standing on a submerged branch from the tree that fell in a couple years ago. The park still has not removed most of the main trunk (and maybe never will). |
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| Every day I am on the lookout for a coyote in the adjacent meadows as I turn from JFK Drive up toward Blue Heron Lake, despite the fact that in the last two-plus years I have seen a coyote near the lake precisely once. |
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| So when I saw this young lady about to cross Blue Heron Lake Drive right in front of me (just past the Pioneer Log Cabin), I had to contain my excitement for fear of scaring her off as I dismounted my bike and got my camera out. I ended up following her for quite a while. Here, she's stopped to see if a rustle in the grass was going to turn into lunch (it didn't). |
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| Here she is drinking from a puddle next to a dirt trail... |
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| ...now making water a little farther along. She actually walked past this spot, then turned around to give it a second sniff. I figure she's either refreshing her own scent or trying to cover up a scent left by a dog or other animal. |
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| She crossed JFK and ducked into the woods on the other side, and when I spotted her again she was peacefully lying down in some dry grass. I was able to show her to several people who walked by, wondering what I was looking at. Everyone was excited and also respectful, and the coyote remained alert but not terribly concerned. I took the hint, though, and stopped following her around. |
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| Web Cam View of Mt. Shasta with Season's First Snow |
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