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| Green Heron at Lily Pond, Golden Gate Park |
The rain finally took a break around 12:30 this afternoon, so I broke the cabin fever by riding down to the San Francisco Botanical Garden to see what I might find on a rainy day, then eventually moved on to check out the Lily Pond.
The green heron was on the east side of the pond, right where it was first reported (it was over on the west side yesterday). At first it was in some reeds much like the ones it was hunting in yesterday, although the light was completely different today under cloudy skies. In fact, the cloudy skies soon became rainy skies, and I had to go find a little bit of cover to slip into my rain pants.
When I returned, the heron flew over to some nearby branches, chasing off a black phoebe that had been using the perch to hawk from. Then the heron popped over to an even closer branch for a little while before swooping onto the edge of the pond and out of my line of sight. Eventually it flew back to the branches, but only as a brief stopover before flying out of sight again.
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| The pink magnolia tree still looks pretty fresh. |
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| Townie Hopper |
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| Hummer in the Pink |
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| The scrub jay picked up some lichen a couple of times, but I didn't see if he just dropped it, or ate it, or what. |
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| But it soon jumped down to the ground and foraged a snail out of some nearby plants, then took it over to this rock to peck off the shell. |
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| It continued pecking off more shell from the cover of a manzanita branch before finally freeing the gastropod for consumption. |
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| Peekaboo Kinglet |
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| There was a lot of chainsaw noise up by the hummingbirds' aloe patch. A huge eucalyptus had fallen in the storm, blocking the main entrance to the Children's Garden. |
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| I'd just put my camera back in my knapsack as a rain squall blew in, when this hummer swooped in among the currant flowers. I'd been hoping to get a shot of a hummer on these California native flowers and was lucky this one stuck around just long enough for me to get my camera back out and shoot one frame. |
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| It looks like the gardeners transplanted some of the pipevine plants from their old patch near an area under construction for greenhouse expansion. The pipevine is mainly twining into the currants on the northern edge of the California garden. |
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| Garden Litter |
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| The two white-fronted geese I recently saw hanging out with the Canadians at Blue Heron Lake were grazing in the Great Meadow with a group of their larger cousins this afternoon. |
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| Green Heron Sticking Its Neck Out |
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| Getting a Foothold |
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| Bent Toe |
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| Wind-ruffled Feathers |
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| I thought he was just turning around, but by the time my viewfinder blackout ended after this shot, he had flown to the edge of the pond and out of sight behind a bunch of foliage. |
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