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| Tres Hombres, Golden Gate Park |
It was still dark when I woke up this morning, and the hair on the back my neck prickled at the eerie noises coming from our back yard -- the kind of noises you don't want to hear when you're awakened in the wee hours in your sleeping bag, far out in the wilderness.... The snarling, hissing, and growling reminded of standoffs between raccoons and our cat, Coco, but of course Coco's been in Cat Heaven for close to a year.
I shined a flashlight down there, angling the beam through the window screen, but I could only see one raccoon. At one point it sounded like the crazed animal was clawing at the door downstairs. What the heck?!
By the time I got down there in my bathrobe the whole thing was over. No raccoon(s). No claw marks on the door. No tufts of fur bitten off. Really, no sign at all that anything had happened. I gave it no further thought.
Later in the day, as I was riding down the JFK Promenade between Blue Heron Lake and the Heroes Grove of redwoods, a red-shouldered hawk screeched out from high in a tree. It was near the place I recently saw one trying to carry a large branch, presumably to its nest. I couldn't see the hawk as I passed, so I turned around to get a better look. That's when I saw several raccoons trotting across the road, leaving the lake behind and heading into the redwoods.
The hawk was on the very top of a tall redwood, not near a nest, so I couldn't resist going after the raccoons. There was a handy bike path nearby that led into the woods, where I parked and poked around on foot, looking for tracks and listening for any sign of them. No luck.
Just as I was about to give up, one raccoon, then a second raccoon sauntered into view nearby. Both of them made a beeline to a redwood and climbed up its trunk to a deformed top that provided a nice flat spot. The animals were practically in darkness up there, and so concealed by leaves and branches, that I couldn't get a shot.
And that's when three more raccoons showed up. It was a treat to be able to observe them up close, but I don't think the feeling was mutual. Eventually the trio gave up on climbing the redwood to join their buddies and instead left the grove. By the time I got back up to the road, they were nowhere to be seen. I was going to ask about them when I saw a woman walking toward me on the pedestrian path, but she did not look like someone who had just enjoyed seeing a pack of raccoons, so I kept mum.
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| House Sparrow in the Black Sage, Sunset Parkway |
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| Bushtit on the Go |
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| Bushtit at Rest |
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| Bashful Bushtit |
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| The whole reason I stopped to try to photograph the bushtits, which were working their way through various trees and shrubs on 14th Avenue and up the Mount Lane steps, was to catch them alongside these African cornflag flowers (Chasmanthe floribunda). |
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| I wondered what they were doing on them, and it looks like they were mainly interested in drinking the dewdrops. |
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| Eye of the Bushtit |
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| This fuzzy fellow thought he might scale the redwood from these thin branches but soon realized it was a futile endeavor. |
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| Nope, there's no way up besides climbing the main trunk (but for whatever reason, only the first two went up). |
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| This drain pipe looked like a good escape route for about ten seconds. I missed the shot where they were both in there, looking out at me. |
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| This was a bit of a lucky shot, panning the camera along with the raccoon's movement. Interesting that its left front leg is raised out of sight while its left hind leg is also raised, in what they call a pacing gait. |
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| Laughing? Snarling? Nope, just yawning. |
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| Raccoons in the Garden of Eden |
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| Seeing as we still had some cloud cover as I passed Blue Heron Lake, I stopped to photograph some bufflehead, which are just too gleaming white in the sunshine. But when this pied-billed grebe suddenly popped up like a cork much closer to me, I couldn't resist. |
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| Bufflehead Drake with Hens |
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| Since I'd already made one stop at the lake I decided to make another to photograph one of the ravens I often see perched in this tree. There are usually more ravens down below, hanging out on park benches and whatnot, waiting to gobble up some bird seed or whatever humans have put on the menu (despite all the signs warning against feeding the wildlife). |
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