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| Green Heron Fanning A Wing, Lily Pond |
Today's walk took me through some nice enough areas, including Windsor Terrace, the Garden for the Environment, Parnassas Heights, Cole Valley, and the Haight, but I couldn't help looking forward to getting past all those urban treasures and into perhaps our greatest urban treasure, Golden Gate Park.
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| Scrub Jay with Acorn, Oak Woodland |
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| Steller's Jay Collecting Acorns |
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| Steller's Jay Loading Up |
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| Bonanza of Miner's Lettuce |
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| Dewy Goodness |
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| The foxglove in this spot has been blooming for at least a couple of weeks, and today I finally stopped to photograph it, taking a knee to get a good angle, and leaving with a muddy trickle running down my shin. |
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| There were mallards, ring-necked ducks, Canada geese, and a hooded merganser at one end of the Lily Pond. The green heron had the other side to itself. |
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| Cresting its Crown Feathers While Scratching an Itch |
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| When I saw it fan its right-wing feathers, I switched to vertical format in anticipation of it doing the same with its left wing, and after making me wait quite a while, it finally did oblige. The frame at the top of the post was my last shot of the bird for today. |
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| Reflecting Curve |
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| Preening Beauty |
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| Screaming Beauty |
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| Is Screaming Beauty Giving Me the Bird? |
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| Townsend's Warbler with Malformed Beak |
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| Brown Creeper Goes Upside-Down |
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| Brown Creeper on Oak, Whiskey Hill |
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| This seemed like a comparatively chubby squirrel. Chubby in a healthy way, that is. |
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A little farther up the Whiskey Hill trail: attitude. (My neighbor who was a long-time gardner in Golden Gate Park uses that name for the hill on the edge of the park between Lincoln Way and MLK Jr. Drive, just south of the park's Maintenance Yard.)
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| I saw my first monarch of the season just west of North Lake today. It was fluttering kind of far away from me, but I went looking for it anyway. I thought it was gone for good when it fluttered south, but hope was renewed when it turned around upon reaching a group of small children. It flew toward me in loops and circles, finally coming into camera range and landing on a branch to rest in the sun just long enough for me to fire off a single frame. |
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