After the Rain

 

A song sparrow sings on a rain-free morning.

After spending a rainy weekend indoors, I felt the need for a bit more nature than I could hope to experience on my usual Monday walk, so I moved up the calendar and took my Tuesday walk instead. Had I waited for Tuesday, I'd likely be facing another rainy day. I am a creature of habit and actually had to talk myself into making the switch, and I'm glad I won the argument. 

As I was doing the monthly bills on Saturday I noticed that my Photoshop & Lightroom subscription had increased by fifty percent, from ten bucks to fifteen bucks a month. I don't recall ever getting a notice from Adobe about the increase -- or of the option to switch to an annual subscription to save sixty bucks over the cost of the monthly sub. I spent half an hour with a robot and a salesperson on Adobe chat to sort it out, but I could simply have logged into Adobe > Manage Account to cancel my monthly sub and immediately purchase an annual sub. The salesperson also reimbursed the January fee I already paid, so the half hour chat went down a little easier.

I also recently had some metal prints made by Bay Photo Lab, paying extra for 2-day shipping to get the prints before the following Friday. They advertise a one-day production turnaround, but my Saturday submission wasn't worked on until Wednesday evening, and my prints arrived the following Saturday. At least the prints looked great. I also recently used Mpix for a metal print that also looked great, but it was a bit more expensive.

The Sunset Parkway was almost devoid of birdlife (including no activity at the potential red-tailed hawk nest), so I opened the door to other subjects to satisfy my urge to shutterbug.

Calla Lily Leaf

Unfurling Calla Lily

B&W Conversion

I couldn't resist these first-of-season forget-me-nots....

Cryptic Critter
(Orange-crowned Warbler)

A pair of hooded mergansers was kind enough to paddle past me at very close range at Mallard Lake.

Dynamic Duo

Song Sparrow on Budding Branch

Townie Stretching Out

Cute Perch

Townie At The Baths

Yellow-Rumper, Mallard Lake

A lot of birds were taking advantage of bathing opportunities in a little creek next to Mallard Lake.

Yellow-rumped Warbler, Golden Gate Park

The lighter colors indicate this is a female or juvenile Townie.

Gorget Flasher

I've been hearing pygmy nuthatches way up high in the pines for weeks, and this is the first one I've caught down low in ages.

Townie On A Twig

As I finally tore myself away from Mallard Lake, this dark-eyed junco stood sentinel on a pathside log.

I figure these are latticed stinkhorn mushrooms that were bleached of their usual orange color by a weekend of nearly constant light rain.

There were lots of red-shouldered hawks squawking in the vicinity of Elk Glen Lake this morning. I don't know what the relationship was between these two, but the one on the right took off soon after they joined up.

See Ya

The red-winged blackbirds were twittering a bit more than usual, and were also a bit more visible than usual in the tules around Elk Glen Lake.

"Keer, Keer, Keer!"

Wild Cucumber, Grandview Park

The Singapore-flagged container ship Maersk Algol off Ocean Beach, heading to the Port of Oakland.

View North From Cliff House

The crew of willets was back on the beach near Cliff House.

Willet Scratcher

Beach Rocks #1

Ocean Beach, San Francisco

Beach Rocks #2

Some ravens dropped in on the strong winds as I was photographing the willets down below.

One of them landed very close to me, no doubt hoping I had a treat for him.

I wonder if he was croaking a warning to the others to stay away from his human.

Quite a few of the songbirds had discolored feathers on their face, which I figure is dirt that has stuck to their feathers with the help of sap or other sticky plant substances.

The lone snowy egret was back at Metson Lake. Which reminds me that, for the first time in a long time, I didn't see any black-crowned night herons at either North Lake or South Lake.

Turtle Pals on the Fallen Cypress, Metson Lake

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Hoodie Gets A Fish

 

Hooded Merganser in the Lily Pond, Golden Gate Park

I had plenty of time to get the camera out of my knapsack when I spotted the female hooded merganser struggling to eat its large prey this morning. I couldn't tell it was a fish until I zoomed in, and I was able to fire off a few frames before it finally got the fish down the hatch, which it did while underwater.

I wondered how such big prey got past the bird's crop, but it turns out diving ducks don't have a crop, which many birds from sparrows to red-tails use to pre-digest their food. Instead, the prey of hooded mergansers gets ground up by the gizzard, which is part of its stomach and is tough enough to pulverize even crustaceans like crayfish. Although all birds have gizzards, few have such tough ones as the hooded merganser.

The hoodie holds onto its prey with a narrow, serrated beak. The fish appeared to be dead by this point, but Mergie still had a tough time getting it down the hatch.

It almost seemed like Mergie was playing with her food, as here she has let go of the fish. On her next dive, she took the fish along for the ride and soon surfaced by herself, presumably having swallowed the fish while underwater.

Another crop-less, gizzardy bird, this great egret was hunting along the edge of the Lily Pond.

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Bando's Territory

 

High Voltage Hawk

I stopped to check out Bando on the way up to the Cliff House overlook today, but he was busy preening and seemed in no hurry to start hunting, so I rode on. The ocean had been super-calm yesterday, with very light wind and almost no swell under a sunny sky, and today was also calm, with a breeze rippling the surface a bit under cloudy skies. Not much bird action other than a few surf scoters, gulls, and cormorants. The four willets who'd been feeding on the beach in front of Sutro Baths the last couple of days were gone.

On the way back down the hill I noticed that the leg-banded juvenile red-tail I call Bando was no longer on his light post. Oddly, he was on the road below it. I stopped and whipped out my camera to see if he'd caught something, instead catching him just as he took wing with empty talons.

He flew over to a highly built-out power pole on Balboa Street, and a second juvenile red-tail flew into a nearby cypress tree just as I was getting over there. Bando soon flew over to the tree as well -- not to shoo away the interloper, but apparently just to say hello. He didn't stay for long before winging it across the tiny Balboa Natural Area to land on a perch of his own along the Great Highway (a perch that had been occupied by a raven who flew away with a squawk).

P.S. I just finished reading The Wager about the last sailing adventure of a ship by that name. It was an excellent story overall, with interesting characters, incredible hardship and resilience, and the conundrums and meaning of justice. But I also I liked the little reminders about the nautical origins of common sayings such as "three sheets to the wind" for loose sails putting a ship out of control, and "under the weather" for putting sick sailors below the weather deck. Now the next time I feel under the weather I'll at least have a clear picture in my mind of what the heck I'm talking about.

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