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| Red-Shouldered Hawk, Golden Gate Park |
Camera in hand, I'd stopped walking along the sandy trail that runs parallel to noisy Lincoln Way to get a closer look at a bird that caught my attention just ahead of me. It was a goldie, a golden-crowned sparrow -- nice bird, but not much of a photo opportunity given the bird's surroundings. As I resumed my walk I caught a surprise off to my left -- a red-shouldered hawk in a nicely camouflaged perch on the stump of a tree branch.
I'd pre-set my ISO to 1600, so all I had to do was swing my camera up and zoom in. I snapped the shutter to get the image above, and when the viewfinder came out of its post-click black-out period, the hawk was already gone. Sometimes one shot is all you get.
I wondered if the hawk had also had its eye on that little goldie, and whether my presence altered its fate.
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| Trail East of Mallard Lake |
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| Townie #1 |
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| Townie #2 |
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| This pygmy nuthatch was also a one-shot deal. |
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| The Great Blue Heron of Elk Glen Lake |
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| Hummer in Regalia |
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| I was watching a gopher dart out of its hole to snag plants when this red-tailed hawk glided overhead and landed on a nearby branch. |
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| I watched the hawk at a distance to see if it would pounce on anything, but instead it flew away to do its hunting elsewhere. Later, as I was climbing the 15th Avenue steps (which seem far steeper than the Hidden Garden Steps!), a red-tail glided overhead, and I figured it was possible, but unlikely, to be the same one I'd just seen near Elk Glen Lake. |
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| Tree-cutting operations cut off my usual route, but my new route had this interesting surprise in store. Those are all large (maybe 12-inch diameter) chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms, growing on a huge burl-like growth midway up a living eucalyptus tree. |
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